#and even with that being accomplished. people did not value it enough to preserve it for future generations

[writeradamanteve]

Lucy Carlyle & Holly Munro

I want to talk about this dynamic as it’s truly one of the most polarizing relationships in the book, for various reasons, and yet it’s really one of the best written ones, also for many reasons.

So, sit down and grab a cup of tea. This will take a while, and Reader, I don’t plan on holding back.

Race and Diversity

Let’s talk about diversity for a moment. For those of you who’ve read the books, you know that until Holly made an appearance in the series, the Lockwood & Co. books were lily white. It was so white. There wasn’t a whisper of there being any people of color.

I cannot claim to know Jonathan Stroud’s values, but having watched the show before reading the books, it was clear to me that Stroud, at least, wasn’t consciously or maliciously being racist when he first wrote these books, and that he did, in fact, acknowledge the lack of diversity by Doing Better, first by introducing Holly in The Hollow Boy, and then ultimately, while collaborating on the TV series, readily allowing for a wealth of diversity, even going so far as giving one of the lead roles, which was canonically white, to a man of Iranian ethnicity.

So whatever prompted Stroud to introduce a person of color in the Lockwood & Co. book series, he clearly wanted to do it right. He didn’t retcon existing characters like other writers I know (looking at She Who Must Not Be Named “He’s Actually Totally Gay! Even If It’s Not In The Books!” ~ugh~), nor did he tokenize them like Ms. Voldemort over there (“All The People Of Color in My Books Are Sidelined and If They Have a Speaking Part, Either Stereotyped or Tends to Be Mostly Unbearable.” ~what a cunt-). Holly was a real, fully fleshed out character, who had a positive, and/or complicated, impact in the story.

Now, if I didn’t read the books and just went by all the posts about Holly’s relationship with Lucy in my Tumblr stream, it would seem like a simple case of opposite personalities clashing, at best--jealousy at it worst, but this relationship is not simple like that. I don't want to call it complicated, either. What it is, is nuanced. There is a lot of nuance to Holly & Lucy.

"Welcome, Holly!" Said Lucy, Never

With Lockwood & Co. all narrated from Lucy’s POV, we are introduced to Holly with Lucy’s reactions, perceptions, and biases.

It is clear, then, that Holly’s sudden appearance in what Lucy considered her Safe Space was jarring and intrusive. Lucy was neither consulted on this nor forewarned, but in a world of landlines, archives, and dewey decimal shelving, there is no way to contact a person in transit, there is no instant messaging, and I don't even know if there are answering machines. In this case, Lucy was traveling to her rural hometown which was hours away, for a couple of days, for the obligatory visit to the family she had left behind.

Consider for a moment: Lucy’s trip home was not a leisure vacation by any means. In fact, it only cemented Lucy’s resolve that she belonged in London, and that she missed being in 35 Portland Row, her found family (a.k.a. Lockwood and George), and her independence—all of which Lucy fought HARD to attain and preserve. None of these things came easy for her, but she did earn it, and she was assured enough in her accomplishments to pay a visit to her hometown voluntarily. We all know how it is--when we're not in a good spot in life, we generally don't feel like reconnecting with people like former classmates or family we left behind. It's too humiliating to tell them that we aren't doing so well, but if we've been successful in our pursuits, those class and family reunions are So Welcome, like--"Sure! I'd love to see you all!" In Lucy's case, she wasn't terribly enthused to see her family again, but she felt strong enough to weather the doldrums of it, knowing full-well that she could tell her mother to Shove It.

So given all that background, Lucy is understandably pissed that Holly comes sashaying into Lockwood & Co., highly recommended, with Lockwood hastily making space for her and keeping her comfortable. Not to mention George instantly liking her.

Holly seemed to have effortlessly settled into Lockwood & Co. without the trials and tribulations Lucy had to endure. It probably didn’t help that by all appearances, Holly’s had it easy most of her life.

Holly was beautiful, refined, classy, and educated. We don’t know much about Holly at this point, but it is implied she is possessed of a pedigree equal to Lockwood, except that she wasn’t orphaned at a young age and that her parents were there to nurture her talents.

It absolutely did not help either that Lucy, as a person, has zero social skills. She, with her Blue Collar upbringing, was not raised to make nice or be diplomatic. We hear her thoughts because she is the narrator, and we think her thoughts judgmental, but thoughts, by their nature, are unguarded. If we’re being completely honest, we all make snap judgements about the people we meet. Some of us may be snarkier about it than others, but a lot of our thoughts are not always positive. I wouldn’t call non-positive thoughts negative, just stripped of the diplomacy and niceties we were taught worked best in social settings.

So Lucy does tend to sound a bit nasty sometimes, but is she, really? Or is it just that we see into her mind without the filter of social norms. The show portrayed it perfectly--Lucy is an observer, and some of those snap judgments make their appearance in her words and actions, but is it more extraordinary than some of ours?

So Lucy, for her part in the introduction of Holly, did pretty well, and her thoughts were quite straightforward: She was pissed about the whole situation with Holly, hired without a proper heads-up to her, without the hoops that Lucy had to jump through, and both Lockwood and George appeared to like Holly better than they ever did Lucy. That was Lucy’s knee-jerk reaction.

In the coming weeks, we see how Lucy fully acknowledges how beautiful and fashionable Holly was, and how efficient, doing exactly what she was hired to do with breezy, confident ease. She cleaned their disaster house, organized their schedule, fielded nuisance inquiries, and booked them profitable, resume-padding jobs. Oh, she can be a field agent, too, but she was a bit rusty, so it was the least of her talents.

Lucy clung to that last bit as her security blanket—something she had over Holly, who otherwise seemed so aggravatingly perfect. So when Lockwood, like the good boss he was, was very much willing to reignite Holly’s skills on the field with gentle support and enthusiasm, this again, made Lucy simmer in resentment.

Keep in mind that while all this was happening, Lucy was trying her best to make it work. She hated that Holly was trotting around like a responsible adult, cleaning and trying to make everyone eat healthy. But Lucy was mostly civil.

The tension between Lucy and Holly was palpable, but you can tell that Holly wasn’t trying to annoy her. They were both trying to make it work, and that Holly was sensitive to Lucy’s triggers.

Lockwood & George

Most of Lucy’s resentment stemmed from how much better Lockwood and George treated Holly than they did Lucy—at least from Lucy’s perception.

So I examined that. Is that true? Did they treat her so much better?

The immediate thought is that yes, they do treat Holly with a level of reverence and care that wasn’t exactly there with Lucy, but if Lucy thinks it’s because they liked Holly better, that would be an oversimplification of how Lockwood and George regards Lucy.

First of all, Lucy and George butted heads immediately. Lucy’s lack of social skills and George’s lack of filter was just an inevitably tumultos brew. They did eventually grow to appreciate one another, deeply and sincerely, but that's because they both saved each other's lives. That's what it took. They love one another now, but they had to go through a lot to get to that point. Also, they never stopped being snarky to each other, so there's that.

Lockwood, however, treated Lucy with respect. He was confident of her abilities and he made space for her, too. He offered her his room, for God's sake, and he didn't think twice about her missing 4th levels. He trusted in her skills well enough to bring her along for jobs, immediately. He was impressed by her Listening talent, and was even excited by how, with her, the agency would thrive.

So it wasn't that Holly was treated better; she was treated differently. Lucy is an field agent. By all appearances--her short brown, low-maintenance hair, her practical clothes, and the rapier at her hip, she was ready for action. She did not sweat details. She did not bother with the tidiness of her room. She certainly wasn't the type to pick up after the boys. Why the hell would she? She wasn't their mother. And she gave as good as she got. She didn't appear shocked or stymied by course language or behavior. She was not a delicate flower, so George and Lockwood treated her like the tough cookie that she was.

Lockwood and George respected Lucy this way, just as they respected Holly that way.

So while we understand Lucy's resentment, we have to keep things in perspective here.

Lucy vs. Holly

Lucy felt that Holly was patronizing, that she looked down on Lucy, and that Holly could do no wrong. It did not help that Lockwood was not acknowledging Lucy's feelings.

To Lockwood's mind, Holly was a godsend (she was), and that Lucy can try a little harder (she couldn't--that was truly the best she could do), and he seriously had very little time to make Lucy feel better about the entire thing. His patience was wearing thin.

Was it all Lucy's fault? No. Was it Holly's? No, but while Lockwood was making all the right moves for the agency as its founder and CEO, Lucy was not only doing her best to make her relationship with Holly work, but she was also grappling with her growing Talent and the use of it. Lockwood did not approve of what Lucy was trying to achieve with her Listening talents. It was dangerous to both Lucy and the rest of them--so much so that he threatened to fire her if she didn't stop.

We all know that Lockwood's threats of termination were empty, because in The Creeping Shadow, we were told that Lockwood did not want Lucy to leave and that he did everything to get her back. This threat was more a desperate attempt to curb Lucy. He is perfectly aware that Lucy cannot be stopped by normal means, but he needed her to stop, because what she was doing was risking her safety, and he would not have her killed because of it. Lockwood believed that by withholding his warmth, Lucy would realize how serious he was and come to her senses.

Because of all this, Lockwood grew distant and Lucy felt that keenly. That Lucy was turning to Skull as her confidante showed how lonely she grew in the midst of it all.

As we come back to Holly and Lucy's relationship, we begin to see that whatever Lucy's feelings for Holly were, they were being processed amidst all this upheaval, so Lucy was not having an easy time of it.

When we truly look at Lucy's and Holly's interactions, both of them were really doing their best, and they carried on well enough, but there was an inevitable breaking point.

Things would eventually come to a head at Aickmere's, brought there by the Chelsea Outbreak. Lucy and Holly would have it out, stirring the poltergeist.

From their argument, we find out that Holly was just as insecure about Lucy's gifts as Lucy was of Holly's. They both thought the other was being patronizing, and that neither of them actually looked down on the other. They picked a bad time to have this discussion, but it was had, and while it stirred the haunting to disastrous levels, it DID give Lucy and Holly a better understanding of one another. It was Growth at a Time of Poltergeist.

In Lucy and Holly's brief time working together to stay alive, we saw exactly how they would get along, how intuitive they were of each other's strengths and weaknesses, and how amidst the arguing, it was totally conceivable that they could come to like one another.

At the end of The Hollow Boy, when Lucy comes to the decision to leave Lockwood & Co., we know for sure it isn't because of Holly, even if everyone thinks it is.

Holly & Lucy

I am still absolutely tickled by the fact that Holly actually tells Lucy in The Creeping Shadow that she misses her, and that Holly wished Lucy had stuck around so that she would have someone to talk to. I did briefly, actually think that Holly might have had a crush on Lucy, because Lucy gives out bi-vibes (or maybe that's just me, Idon'tknow), but as I thought about it more, that would be a pretty annoying trope, where everyone falls in love with the heroine, so no. I think Holly was actually setting her sights on someone else, though Holly absolutely did miss Lucy, and she genuinely wanted to be besties with Lucy, especially because Holly thought Lockwood and George were so hard to crack (and by the way, this is so telling. Again, more proof of how differently George and Lockwood treats Lucy and Holly--not better, but differently. They are at their best behavior with Holly and as a result, they aren't vulnerable with her. The boys, however, treat Lucy like one of them, so she knows them the way Holly couldn't).

Holly's contributions to the narrative of The Hollow Boy were significant, in the same way that Kipps's contributions were significant in The Creeping Shadow. The Empty Grave treated us to the dynamic of having Kipps and Holly round out Lockwood & Co., fully entrenched into its maverick ways and the secret of the Whispering Skull.

Lucy and Holly's relationship found an easy cadence, and I especially loved how Lucy and Holly banded together instinctively to comandeer the two-bed room at the inn, leaving the boys to grapple with the second bedroom arrangements.

I cannot stress enough how well Holly and Lucy's relationship turned out, and how I will marvel at its development. I will always think of this relationship as well-earned. It was a journey, human and interesting. Stroud did a marvelous job forming it.

[leportraitducadavre]

You probably already answered something like this, but what do you about the Naruto and Sasuke ship? You think it doesn't work, or Naruto isn't actually a good fit for Sasuke? I love a lot of the analysis and the way you write, so I'm curious.

Hi there! Thank you for your words.

I did write something about them here, so you might want to look into that, I don't focus much on the SNS dynamic inside the manga and I might do that at some point (there's a lot of ground to cover) as the relevant points repeat themselves quite constantly throughout their interactions.

You need to take into account how Naruto interacts with the notion of "prodigy" in order to understand his approach towards Sasuke and how his acknowledgment became of utmost importance to him, as such is the basis of their relationship:

Regarding Naruto’s characterization, antagonizing the "prodigy" notion is incredibly important to him, not because he (truly) denies the strength of those who are given the title, but because their existence denies him of the acknowledgment he seeks, as all his accomplishments are "overshadowed" by Neji and Sasuke's sole presence. Therefore being recognized (positively so) by their ninja skills (as such is the political and cultural importance of such aspects inside the Shinobi system) is, to him, the most important category when pointing out a person’s value.  To Naruto (and a big portion of the fandom) Neji is not considered a failure (unlike himself, Hinata, or Lee) therefore he somehow has an easier life despite being, in every other manner, oppressed by his family. This is a mindset Konoha in itself teaches to its citizens as this dogma’s value rests on the fact that it guarantees the success and preservation of the status quo established. Therefore, for Will of Fire supporters,  Sasuke couldn’t be discriminated against because he was praised for his techniques/was popular, Neji might be a slave but he’s incredibly valuable to Konoha due to his strength, so there is some sort of “retribution”. 

(Source)

Naruto is contemplating Sasuke abandoning him and Team 7, which is the primary fuel in this quest and the reason behind his pain, he mentions the team that Shikamaru gathered (per Tsunade’s orders) to bring him back as these are individuals that put their life on the line to “rescue” Sasuke, yet Sasuke cares not. Naruto’s words are not a coincidence, he never states that the people searching for him are Sasuke’s friends (they aren’t, they never interacted in any significant way), the only thing they have in common is their village of origin and loyalty. For Naruto, that’s enough for a bond, for Sasuke it isn’t. I do believe that this specific claim: “You think I’m just gonna let you go?!” which is the culmination of Naruto’s speech about how Orochimaru will grant him power in exchange for his life (x) is understandable as Naruto is both hurt by Sasuke abandoning them and scared for his friend’s life (Sasuke is even leaving despite being aware that he’ll be likely killed, which is quite worse as not only Naruto feels pain as a result of his only friend escaping, but also him leaving to certain death). Naruto’s primary knowledge about Sasuke’s goal (killing Itachi) is that he’s willing to die for it (x) that, in regards to Naruto’s own goal, it’s unfathomable –as death is not one of the lengths Naruto is prepared for in order to get the acknowledgment he seeks. Furthermore, Sasuke’s death will automatically jeopardize his own objective, as Sasuke’s recognition is the one Naruto craves the most (here and here Naruto remembers Sasuke denying Naruto the equal status he wants, and Sasuke once again refuses: “who cares what you want?”).  “You were my Idol, and so… hearing that… I was never happier, with those words, for the first time… you acknowledged I was good.” (x) Can’t make it clearer here Sasuke’s relevance on Naruto’s life and the importance of him staying, of him acknowledging Naruto.

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (211): Wed 12th Oct 2022

Tonight Radio 4 aired an episode an episode of Hancock's Half Hour that had been lost for over 60 years before being rediscovered on a reel to reel tape by a film collector at a car boot sale. It still baffles me that the BBC wiped so many iconic TV and radio shows (or just didn't bother to record them in the first place), you'd think they would naturally want to preserve all of this groundbreaking material. Granted they didn't realize that Hancock, Dr Who and the countless other shows that are presently missing would come to be as fondly regarded as they now are but how did they not realize that they could save money by recording the shows and then repeating them? I admit this would be harder to do with TV shows since the reels required to record them were expensive and they felt they needed to wipe them in order to make new shows but tape recorders couldn't have been that expensive at the time, they could easily have recorded the audio from the radio shows that are now lost. Weirdly I think that learning about all the missing media from the BBC and elsewhere was one of the things that made me want to start this blog in the first place (I've been blogging every day since 2012). Admittedly nothing I've ever written has been of any more value than a quick chuckle ever now and again (by every now and again I mean maybe once a month) but at least I now have a record of at least one thing I did or thought about every day for the last decade. In some sense all of those years have not been lost, some tiny fragment of every day has been preserved just because I remembered to write something down. I can only hope that enough fans at the time did actually bother to record these shows and they're currently sitting on reel to reel tapes in attics or at car boot sales waiting to be re-discovered. Watched a few Buzzfeed Unsolved videos. The guys who put this show together are super talented, really funny and clearly must do research on the topic they cover until their eyes start to bleed. One of their most famous videos is the one where they recap and offer their opinions on the OJ Simpson trial. I tried to learn about this case through watching The People Vs OJ Simpson but I lost interest after a few episodes, possibly because every time David Schwimmer appears on screen I just see Ross from Friends. I get that the jury at the time was convinced that the cops prosecuting OJ were racist but at the same time just because one of the guys on the prosecution team is a bigot doesn't mean you should ignore the evidence the rest of the team puts forward. For me the mere fact that the jury didn't click on that the reason OJ couldn't get the bloody glove on his hand was because he was wearing a rubber glove underneath it is clear proof that they weren't the brightest bunch. Also the jury swore that they had never heard of OJ Simpson but the guy was one of the most famous people in the world (and now as a result of this trial probably one of the most famous who ever lived) so even if they might not have been able to list off his athletic accomplishments or go through his career highlights they were bound to know something about him. What they should have done is got a bunch of people from the Asmat tribe in New Guinea (the ones who probably ate Michael Rockefeller) brought them over to the US and had them be the jury in the trial (I know that sounds a bit like slavery but it wouldn't be since they would be sent back as soon as the trial was over...so it's more like kidnapping). There's no way that these Asmat guys would definitely never have ever heard of OJ Simpson and so they'd be the perfect people to judge whether he was a murderer (although I guarantee that somehow, some way if David Schwimmer walked into the courtroom they tribe would exclaim in their native language "Look! It's Ross From Friends"). Anywho, long story short OJ definitely did it. Definitely. Not even a shadow of a fucking doubt. And even if it turns out that he didn't do it, he definitely did do it! (Incidentally I came up with an idea for an episode of Black Mirror about an actor from a famous sitcom who gets typecast so signs up to have his brain put into the body of a robot. However something goes wrong and the actor ends up having his brain put into the body of a robot...kangaroo. I'm going to call it: "David Schwimmer The Kangaroo". And yes I realize it might be more fitting to have Matt Le Blanc play the title role and have the android take the form of a baby kangaroo just so I could use the title "Joey The Joey" but no, my gut tells me David Schwimmer the Kangaroo is the moneymaker

[lilac-5ky]

I just thought about something interesting... do you think shinsuke's dad (and mom) is still alive?? and if yes what do you think was his reaction and he heard about his son's actions ? what did he think when shinsuke chose to leave with shoyo? does he even know his son died ? what does he think about the kiheitai ? just so many questions... I really wanna know what you think about this

poor format doing this on ipad ;-;

That’s actually something I’ve also been wondering about! Ever since we watched that flashback with Sakamoto’s arrival, you know the one where Gin teased Takasugi about his dad buying him legos and him being the firstborn son, I really started giving it some thought.

First of all, Takasugi has siblings?!?!? It’s only unexpected because he’s never mentioned it, but if you think about it, that can explain why his family didn’t have a hard time disowning him. If there is someone else behind him to carry on his family’s legacy (most likely a younger brother at the very least, idk his father seems to me like a real traditionalist to let a sister take up on that), then it shouldn’t be the end of the world for them to lose a son.

Also, there was someone else in his household who cared enough to feed him, judging by how his father asked him to stop giving him food. Now I am really not sure who that person is, could be a sibling, could be a servant, or anyone really, but it shows that there is someone who at the very least has immediate relationships with is family, and cares enough for him.

Now that I’ve sorted that out, hmmm whether his parents are alive or not, there is no telling. His father was a samurai who cared about what others had to say, considering how he freaked when Takasugi began to associate with Shouyou, a man who was already plagued by rumors. It wouldn’t be wild to assume that his father was pro amanto or at least not anti amanto, and so I doubt he participated in the war. Perhaps the anti sword law could affect him, considering he was also a samurai, but in the end he strikes me more as the conformist who cares about preservation of wealth. I don’t mean to say that he licked their boots for sure, but I’m trying to play profiler here with the few hints we have.

Whether his mom or siblings are alive, I suppose it depends entirely on his father, considering they used to wipe out clans and families very easily. If they survived the war, like no random casualty taking their lives, then they could be alive!

Moving on to his father reaction regarding his son’s “accomplishments”. Supposing his father is alive and he doesn’t live in an igloo, he must have heard about what’s become of him. I believe his opinion of Takasugi remains negative, considering how he’s been “soiling” their family’s name. He wouldn’t reach out to scold him or anything (That’d be funny to see), but it will just reaffirm to him that kicking Takasugi out was for the best. I don’t think that he’d ever acknowledge him, even if he succeeded everything on his agenda. People like him are very specific about their values and beliefs, and anything that strays from that road is inherently bad.

Minor mention that this is an interesting difference between the two father figures in his life. Shouyou told him he can choose his own path, whatever that is, while his father chose a path for him to follow, whether he wanted to take on such a path or not. This should also be one of the reasons why Takasugi favored Shouyou over his own family. He must have felt so oppressed! Imagine not knowing what you want to do with your life, while having people over your head telling you what you must do. What must be done and what someone wants to do are completely different things and while Takasugi didn’t have an answer for the latter, he knew he didn’t want to choose the life his family wanted for him. If he did, then he would have been satisfied with going to the Military Academy, he wouldn’t be nagging to Katsura or beat kids up, and he wouldn’t have joined Shouyou.

Also I feel like, if Shouyou gave him some sort of criteria as to what makes a samurai good, then Takasugi wouldn’t bite it. He is someone who does what he wants to do and hates being told what to do. By choosing Shouyo, he chose freedom, one that his family didn’t offer. Oh and another thing; it’s not that he opposed becoming a samurai. He wanted to become one, he just didn’t want to do so while following his father’s Bushido, which might as well be a career change in their eyes. I think that if his family was supportive, then rather than running and sneaking around, Takasugi could have had a healthier family environment. He is not a bad son or anything, he just wanted to find his own way, something he couldn’t do within his family. Had they accepted that he wants to take on their wishes but follow them in his own way, then things would have been much better for him.

Abou his reaction when it came to him joining Shouyou hmmm, perhaps he didn’t see it coming. Disowning someone is a big thing and it didn’t come from the first “mishap”. It looks to me like his father gave him many chances to “get his shit together” because he didn’t really want to do it. Maybe his other kids weren’t as skilled as he was, maybe he knew that Takasugi deep down was a good son. But, if Takasugi is anything like his father, then pride would have kept either party from reaching out, even if there were some regrets in the way. Most likely, the moment he chose Shouyou, Takasugi died to him, considering how he wouldn’t think that his son would actually give up on everything he’d build for some random dude.

Whether he knows of Takasugi’s death, that’s hard to say. I don’t think he’d get to know, unless Katsura or something personally informed him of it. He strikes me as the “no contact, you are dead to me” kinda guy, but if he found out what he did at the end, then maybe he’d feel a sense of pride as well as sadness. I’d like to believe that Takasugi’s father wasn’t a complete monster and like all parents he did have some love for him. Any parent who finds out of their son’s death would be sad, even for a minute.

And about the Kiheitai well, maybe he finds it stupid that so many people followed someone as incompetent as him. That’s one side of the coin. The other would be him experiencing failure? What I mean to say is that perhaps his father knew that he wasn’t doing a good job as a parent. He couldn’t support him nor guide him but now his son has managed to do that for many people. Everything he couldn’t give him as a father, he found in others, and while the vast majority shunned him because you knew, terrorist, there were many inspired. In the end, he wouldn’t admit it okay, this is all personal thinking stuff.

Final paragraph of this madness of a post lmao I could go on all night long, but I feel like my eyes will pop out from all the tears they shed. Based on clues, Takasugi’s father is a prideful and stubborn man, who values society’s opinions more than the well-being of his children. In a time and age where honor and public opinion mattered most, it is unsurprising for him to be like that. However, considering how the frequency and severity of his grounding increased (up until disowning), he should be someone who has the minimum consideration for Takasugi. Whether that’s because he valued him as an heir, or because he loved him as a child, there is no telling. After all, his pride would never allow such a man to show actual affection, which should explain why Takasugi is not great at displaying such emotions either. Shouyou was warm and affectionate, he took him in without second thoughts and offered him a different path. He have a love starved boy everything his pride wouldn’t let him admit he wanted, because in the end, Takasugi is a human being with human needs. He wants to have bonds with others, to be happy and to make his own choices. The end.

THIS TURNED INTO A HUGE MESS AND I WENT FROM ONE POINT TO THE OTHER BUT ITS 3 AM AND MY EYES ARE BLOODSHOT AHAHA I JUST REALLY WANTED TO ANALYZE AND REPLY TO THAT! i don’t know what I’m yelling for smh. oh and if u have more questions and wanna discuss things further, lemme know, im a sucker for such conversations :p

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

[rpmemesbyarat]

Reasons Your Character Was Made A Vampire That ISN’T Love

I've been roleplaying in vampire games for awhile, and a very common motive that I see for why a character was made a vampire, was that the vampire who made them was in love with them (or lust, or just because they were beautiful). In fact, it's far and away the single most common reason given in bios, in my own experience. Another thing I see a lot is that the character was just turned RANDOMLY for no apparent reason, which is weird to say the least. And while I'm not going to say these are bad reasons you should never ever do or anything like that, I am here to offer some alternatives if you’re interested in them, if “love” or “attraction” doesn’t work for your story or character, etc: 1) Hate. If vampirism is a cursed existence, maybe it was brought about because the sire vampire hated your character and wanted them to suffer, or had a grudge against someone your character was connected to and wanted to punish them by “stealing” their loved one and making them a monster. Similarly, perhaps your character was being punished for something grave. Note that this really only works when being a vampire is a truly unfortunate thing to be; being given eternal life, youth, and a bevy of superpowers is not exactly a punishment on its own, especially if your vampire has ways around killing people for their blood (bagged blood, willing donors, psychic vampire, doesn't need to kill to feed, etc) so I would recommend it for canons where being a vampire really sucks, no pun intended. 2) Usefulness. Perhaps your character has some skill or ability that their sire had use for, or some role they could play, and it’s something they needed long enough to require making them a vampire. Or maybe the skill is needed, but it can only be useful if they also have the enhanced strength, speed, and healing typically associated with vampires in current pop culture. Or maybe they needed a patsy or pawn in some scheme, and they needed to be a fellow vampire, and what better one than some naive newcomer who trusts them? There’s endless potential reasons here! 3) Preservation. Maybe your character has some trait or skill that the vampire who turns them believed must be preserved forever. Maybe they’re a master artist not appreciated in their own time, the last speaker of a dead language, a scientist who needs more time on their work (a project the vampire themselves commissioned, perhaps?) than a natural lifespan can give, or some rare supernatural talent they already posess before being turned. 4) Worthiness. The vampire sees something in this character that they feel has earned being a vampire too. Maybe it’s ruthlessness, cleverness, military prowess, or drive to survive above all else. Maybe it’s unusual kindness, or unusual cruelty. Maybe they accomplished some great feat. Maybe they did a favor for the vampire in exchange for the gift. Again, there are vast options here depending on the personal standards of the sire. One good tip I recommend is to develop the sire vampire as a character themselves, not just as a background prop to the character being turned. What they value, what they're like, who they are that has NOTHING to do with their childer. Then look at that person, and go, why would they turn someone? A lot of times, the sire character either has no personality at all, or is just obsessed with the childer, and that's about the amount of thought given. I think that's part of why some people have a hard time thinking why their character would be turned, so they just go with 'well they were in love' or make it a random attack. There certainly are people who, if they were a vampire, would turn others for love. Others for greed or gain to themselves in some way. Others out of loneliness, a desire to preserve something they value, out of anger, because they were impressed---the reasons for someone to be turned are as numerous as people themselves, and most vampires (depending on the canon) are people. For ideas on why your character could be turned, another good reference is to check out the different clans of the “Vampire: The Masquerade” tabletop roleplaying game (which is where the terms sire and childer seem to originate!). Each clan has different values, and thus seek different traits in recruits, and have different ways of handling said recruits---teaching them, nurturing them, testing them cruelly, or straight up abandoning them to see how they do. This isn’t to say make your character(s) obvious expies of the clan in question (unless that’s what you want) but more like, say, if the way the Toreador clan or the Lasombra clan chooses and treats their “Embraces” sticks out to you as working for your character and/or their sire, there’s no reason you can’t use that for your own character even in a setting where those clans don’t exist. You can mix and match too----for instance, maybe the sire chose your character for Ventrue-like reasons (nobles, religious leaders, great military figures, successful CEOs, powerful mob bosses, etc) but treated them in a more Gangrel-like way (Embraced by ambush, then abandoned to survive on their own for a time and only re-approached by their sire once they proved their worth) Also, while most vampire RPs that I’ve seen work on the “human turned by a vampire who also used to be human” version, it is worth noting that while modern pop culture vampires are almost exclusively deliberately "made" by other vampires, that's not the case at all in the folklore(s) that they come from. These are some ways people became vampires in various legends from around the world:

- Dying without being baptized - Being buried improperly or not at all - Dying of suicide - Wicked deeds in life - People who were witches or werewolves in life; werewolves and vampires overlap in many folklores, and are sometimes the same creature. Ditto for vampires and witches. - Be the seventh child of the same sex in a family - In some stories, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead - Violent death - Unfinished business in life And if you’re making your own story, you can always make up your own unique way! Magical rituals, botched experiments, deals with gods, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination!

[luckyspacerabbit]

would you ever share the background you created for kai leng? i'd be so interested in hearing it!

Hehe, yes! Thank you for waiting anon. I wanted to really think this through and make sure I was working with all the possible details of his character.

Okay, so my goal with fleshing out Kai was not to excuse him as a villain or to necessarily redeem him, but to humanize him and hopefully incur sympathy because I find his depiction as a mysterious lackey boogeyman to be 🙄 one dimensional and playing on racist tropes like the yellow peril ✨ (also bioware making him predominantly chinese + a lil russian. extrapolate what u will lol)

So here is my background for Kai :) Lots of childhood headcanoning and then some general talk about his character/why I chose certain elements as I did (such as dumping that dumb phantom blade for butterfly swords AEORHIG)

Childhood: According to the wiki, Kai is Earthborn, and from his general heritage we can assume that he grew up in Northern China (omg that's where my ancestors are from). The most populous city there is Beijing, which, if there was a spaceport or alliance recruitment anywhere, it would be there.

I headcanon that he was born to a bit of an unsteady family, where it was likely there was estrangement and unsafe conditions between the mother and father that may have created a sense of helplessness and neglect from a young age.

In my canon, Dan Hyun's mom, Hannah Shepard was the head of an agricultural research facility on Trident, and was an old friend of Kai's mom (From University, possibly).

As conditions worsened throughout Kai's childhood, his mom decided to take a chance and flee with Kai (age 10 at the time) to Hannah Shepard's science facility on Trident (Sentinel Agricultural Research Facility), where she and Kai would stay for about two years as his mom worked to save enough money for their own place .

Since Dan Hyun was already being homeschooled, it was easy enough for Kai to join up alongside her.

Dan Hyun (12 at the time) was extremely happy to have a friend since life on the facility could be really lonely-- but with all these changes Kai was having a difficult time adjusting, especially when Dan Hyun felt put off by his competitive attitude. After so long feeling neglected and growing in a tumultuous home environment, he craved external validation: homeschool provided an avenue for that. They developed their own academic-based competitive rivalry that counted towards friendship, but grew distant when he moved out with his mom about two years later.

When Dan Hyun was 18 (Kai at 16), she managed to apply to an Alliance Research Training program and receive admission-- something that was considered highly prestigious, despite her parents' reluctance. Kai had already begun to build resentment towards her due to the way her parents treated her (very preciously, sheltered, and without exposing her to the difficult parts of life) in contrast with what he lacked in family and world kindness, creating a drive to supersede her and compete with her once again, if only to have tangible proof that just because he began in a lower place didn't mean he couldn't surpass the vision of success.

After this event, they would strike up a still somewhat friendly rivalry again that continued until Kai enlisted in the Alliance at the age of 18 (his attempts to join directly at 16 failed in my canon lol, but he sure tried )

Alliance Service:

Kai took the combat-driven route while Dan Hyun was receiving training for her eventual research establishment in Akuze, meaning that in their line of work, they never crossed paths-- Though they maintained occasional communication and met up here and there whenever Kai was back from his tours.

This is where I believe his decline truly began.

Some habits, like his desire for tangible proof of success and seeking external validation, manifested more heavily in this time. Collecting badges off of dead soldiers (To remember his skill first hand) is a notable one, but I speculate he relied heavily on the word of his commanding officers to counter his self-esteem. Titles were incredibly important because they were proof. When he began to feel a loss of control which led to emotional outbursts and breakdowns, he would fall back on these bits of evidence that he had done something, anything.

The weight and violence of service combined to break away his mental strength and conditioned him to that of a soldier.

Famously, he was discharged in 2186 after his N7 designation. In a bar fight on shore leave, he murdered a Krogan (OKAY. Listen. The wiki says "first-degree murder" but first degree requires premeditation and bar fight implies heat of the moment. So IDK I think the details around this one are a little fishy. He was on leave but he was a soldier, so ? he probably just had a weapon on him? Okay, I'm not excusing him but premeditation is a bit different from manslaughter so just something I've pondered. It separates intentional killers from accidental murders).

At this point, he is formally incarcerated and set to serve a twenty-year sentence.

Cerberus Contact:

The year is 2177, and Kai has lost everything he's ever worked for. His prestige is gone, he is at the worst place he has ever been, his mom won't talk to him, and he has no one. He had even stopped hearing from Dan Hyun, the only person he could have considered a friend once.

Through a small TV in the prison, he is able to hear about the attack on Akuze, and its one survivor: Alliance Scientist Dan Hyun Shepard. In the attack her biotic abilities (Which she had kept secret for many years) were revealed, prompting immediate recruitment into the N7 Program and a contract for ten years of service. This drove Kai into rock bottom-- while he had nothing, Dan Hyun was steadily on track to uprooting the only thing he had ever felt like he had accomplished.

This is when Cerberus intervened, promising him a home, freedom, belonging, and success.

So of course Kai agreed. Why wouldn't he? He had nothing left in his miserable life and there would never again be a place for him.

Cerberus Intervention:

It's my belief that Kai wasn't necessarily "alienphobic" in the beginning. Instead, I think The Illusive Man saw a very clear opportunity to recruit and nurture a broken man into a pawn of service. TIM is incredibly smart-- everyone who works for Cerberus is. He knew what Kai needed was validation, the promise of success held directly on the tip of his tongue to drive him into tenacity and action.

Organizations like Cerberus, even in real life, prey on people at weak points, fulfill their needs and drape their ideology on top like icing on a cake. That's not to say that Kai is completely innocent-- he ate the sweets and readily threw the world to the side in order to attain more-- but it does give some perspective.

Kai in Cerberus:

In ME2 we know there is some apprehension on Kai's part about the role Shepard will play. He is already starting to feel slighted from failures with Rasa and takes even the possibility of rejection from TIM extremely hard and with violent emotional outburst. This evidences how much TIM has whittled him away over the decade of service. Kai feels as though he owes everything to TIM, that TIM saw something in him-- failing him is disproving that and accepting what Kai has feared all along: that he truly is a worthless and incapable person.

Kai and Shepard:

Kai is best known for his direct antagonism towards Shepard in the events of ME3, directly killing their allies and potential love interests in a way that is extremely personal. Yes, it is part of the job, but at the same time, it's clear Shepard gets under his skin. It's because in the end, after all that setup, Shepard is the one person who can take it all away from him.

They can replace him as TIM's prodigy/ They can bring an end to the organization that gave him everything (From his cybernetic enhancements (uh indoctrination cough couch) ) to his purpose in life. Kai threw it all in with them because he didn't see another choice.

My Canon: The End

So how do things end for Kai in my canon?

As you're aware, you can unalive him, violently. But Dan Hyun is very emotional and due to their shared childhood, I like to believe that there was still a grand feeling of kinship between them, a recognition of the other due to shared insecurities. I don't think there was ever a time Dan Hyun looked at Kai and saw anything other than her slighted friend (which is very romanticized, but SHE is very romanticized), it was just about getting Kai to see that too.

She locked him down the best she could, yelled, cried, and beat the shit out of him, but ultimately, preserved his life. After the crucible had been fired and Thane (alive ofc) attended to, she sought to right things between her and Kai: whatever form that takes. Who knows if he'll ever be able to live comfortably in society again-- but at least here, he has the chance.

Random Tidbits:

Some notes! At his best, I like that Kai is portrayed as Loyal, Hard Working, Methodical, Clever, Tenacious, and Factual. I think sometimes he can be written off unfairly as wimpy or scared, but in truth, he's very sure of his abilities and able to calculate his chances extremely well. He's smarter than fandom gives him credit for.

He has an interesting conflict between arrogance based on title and humbleness. He knows he wants to be the best but he never airs it-- like when Rasa suggests that he wants to be the leader for Humanity but he grows quiet and says to just focus on where things are at right now.

His time as a soldier absolutely affected him in ways I think sharpened him to the killer he became. It instilled values that remained with him in Cerberus, such as when he berates Bates for abandoning his squad and calls him a traitor. Kai doesn't betray-- he's quite literally ride or die.

Also? The ninja sword is super dumb because Kai is Chinese and the swords and Phantom's themselves are designed to appear Japanese in aesthetic. Ninjas= Japanese, but China did have their own sect of Assassins which I believe gave birth to Wu Ching as a type of Martial Arts? Or was drawn from it hmm

To keep to accuracy, Kai would have trained more towards their martial art techniques which focuses on close combat and quick movements, as well as the use of dual blades called butterfly swords (You'd likely recognize them as a set of rogue daggers).

That's all for that meta! Phew. If anyone actually read to the end, hey wassup, hope you enjoyed, and take most of this with a grain of salt since it's my headcanons and background work :) Thank you again for reading!

[robininthelabyrinth]

What if instead of being his dad Wen Ruohan was his grandfather. And one of his sons had sizhui.

also on ao3 because long

Nie Mingjue staggered a little after he stormed off, the adrenaline rush of fury – at Meng Yao’s betrayal, his many betrayals, at Lan Xichen for accepting Meng Yao’s explanations at face value, at himself for not being able to do what he probably should – all fading away into exhaustion and pain.

It was at that point that he acknowledged that, in his anger, he had probably made a mistake by storming off in the first place – even with Baxia in hand, even with Wen Ruohan finally dead, Nie Mingjue really shouldn’t walking around alone in the Sun Palace.

He was injured, and heavily so; any Wen that wanted could probably take him down. A strong wind could probably take him down.

Still, it wasn’t as if his pride would permit him to go back and ask Lan Xichen to leave Meng Yao’s side for long enough to notice that a man he’d called friend for over a decade had been rather brutally tortured for several days and could very much use some medical assistance - apparently, tending to the injuries to Meng Yao’s ego after Nie Mingjue had shouted at him about the fact that he’d murdered people was more important.

So Nie Mingjue kept on going, lifting his sleeve to try to wipe the blood out of his eyes.

It didn’t work very well, mostly because there wasn’t much space left on his sleeve that wasn’t already covered in blood, and it only ended up making it worse.

On a whim, he turned towards the corridor where he knew from experience years before that the Wen clan’s rooms were located, thinking only that he might be able to find a sheet or some spare clothing to use to wipe his face clean.

He found something different.

The Wen cultivator was only a boy, around the same age as Nie Huaisang; his knees shook and his eyes were white all around the edges in his terror. The colors of his robes suggested he was surnamed Wen but of low status, and while there was a sword at his belt, it looked as fresh and unused as Nie Huaisang’s saber.

Instead of wielding it, he was clutching a small child, a year or two old at most, to his chest.

Nie Mingjue stared, and the boy stared back.

“These are the rooms for the main family,” Nie Mingjue said after a moment of silence, and the boy blanched, inadvertently confirming his suspicions. “Whose child is that?”

“Please don’t kill us,” the boy said, lip quivering. “Or don’t – just don’t kill him. A-Yuan didn’t do anything.”

“Whose child is that?” Nie Mingjue repeated. “Wen Xu’s?”

He couldn’t imagine it being Wen Chao’s, though he supposed it was theoretically possible.

The boy nodded reluctantly. “I wasn’t planning on telling him anything about that,” he offered. “He wouldn’t need to know…”

“That I killed his father?” Nie Mingjue asked, arching his eyebrows, then shook his head, dismissing the entire thing. If a child grew up and wanted revenge for his father, he of all people wouldn’t stop him from trying no matter how little Wen Xu deserved the honor; he could deal with the problem whenever it arose. “I’m not going to kill you. Either of you – what’s your name?”

“Wen Ning – ah, Qionglin. You’re not going to..?”

Nie Mingjue nodded at the sword at his waist. “Tell me, Wen Qionglin. Have you ever used that?”

“Uh, I fly sometimes? Not well, though,” Wen Ning said, looking confused. “What does – oh.”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes, feeling like the point had been made.

Wen Ning clearly did not agree, still looking lost and not a little terrified.

“Yes,” Nie Mingjue clarified dryly. “I am not going to kill you. There’s no battle happening right now, so killing you would be the same as killing a civilian, and unlike your sect, we don’t do that. Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Anything else?”

“Wen Xu had neither a wife nor a concubine,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’m making an assumption, but given the child’s age, the timing…and the fact that that child has the look of a Lan.”

Wen Ning winced again and bowed his head. “His mother was taken against her will from the Cloud Recesses after Wen Xu burned it,” he confirmed in a quiet voice. “She – she committed suicide, not long after the birth.”

Nie Mingjue sighed. He’d been right, then; this child was one of the many remnants of war. 

He thought, for a moment, of calling Lan Xichen over to tell him that he had a cousin lingering here. Surnamed Wen, of course, and that would be a hard burden for the child to bear growing up, but the child was still Lan blood; Lan Xichen would take him back to Gusu in a heartbeat.

Of course, Lan Xichen was still with Meng Yao – calling one would bring the other. Meng Yao, who had just killed Nie cultivators that Nie Mingjue had known his whole life and blamed him for not understanding why he just had to do it, even though he knew Wen Ruohan would be dead soon, and Lan Xichen, who defended him without a second thought, without giving a chance for Nie Mingjue to explain his grievances, without trusting him to have a reason for his anger…

Meng Yao, who had sent them letters with information – sent Lan Xichen letters with information.

The same information that had led Nie Mingjue into the trap at Yangquan, which had led him to the Sun Palace, where Wen Ruohan couldn’t wait to see him kneeling before his throne, where Meng Yao had used that moment of inattention, focused on Nie Mingjue’s pain, to stab the man in the back –

Where Lan Xichen had come so conveniently quickly after the death was accomplished.

Had Lan Xichen known what Meng Yao was planning? Had he known what he was sending Nie Mingjue into?

Had he known and decided not to tell him?

(Nie Mingjue would have gone willingly, if they’d told him. Being captured as nothing, the torture was nothing, he would bear it all a thousand times over if it meant that he would see Wen Ruohan’s death. But he would have only taken volunteers with him, men prepared to accept death, and not – not as it was.)

For what might be the first time in his life, Nie Mingjue felt a momentary pang of distrust in Lan Xichen’s judgment.

“If you find yourself in need of help with the child, come to my Nie sect,” he finally said, a compromise with himself. He’d normally offer a token of some sort, but he didn’t have any on him; they had all been taken away long ago. “You’re both surnamed Wen, so you’ll probably end up in a prisoner of war camp at first, and then get resettled, but if it ends up being too hard, you can tell them to ask for me…and if I’m not around for whatever reason, ask for Lan Wangji. He’s reasonable and righteous, as well as discreet. He won’t turn you down.”

Wen Ning nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind, Sect Leader. Thank you.”

Nie Mingjue waved a hand at him, nose wrinkling as he felt the blood start dripping down his forehead again. “You should leave first. Get far away from here, before anyone else makes the connection I did.”

Wen Ning began to go, then hesitated. “Do you need medical assistance, Sect Leader Nie? I know a little…”

“I’ve been in Wen Ruohan’s custody since Yangquan,” Nie Mingjue said, and Wen Ning blanched; at least he realized what that meant, even if, somehow, Lan Xichen didn’t. “‘A little’ isn’t going to help.”

“You probably shouldn’t be walking around if you’ve got broken bones,” Wen Ning said anxiously. “Or burns. Or deep cuts. Or, uh –”

“Wen Qionglin.”

“…yes?”

“Take the child and go.”

-

Eventually Lan Xichen had found him, furious at the apparently belated realization that Nie Mingjue had not gone straight back to his camp for medical help – as if Nie Mingjue would know where their camp was, given that he hadn’t been told anything – but the evidence of his concern helped ease Nie Mingjue’s fears.

He was aware it probably shouldn’t – he still believed there was no reason for those Nie cultivators to die, believed that Meng Yao could have offered to send them away to the Fire Palace the way he had done later when he wanted to preserve Nie Mingjue’s life – but he couldn’t help himself. Between his temper, his position, and his reticent personality, he had many admirers but almost no close friends, and so he treasured the ones he had like gold. The thought of breaking with Lan Xichen left ashes in his mouth.

In fact, if one looked at it a certain way, Lan Xichen might be the only friend he had left – he’d had others, growing up, but they’d become distant after he became Sect Leader, the impossible barrier between them, and even more distant once he’d become war leader, responsible for their lives and deaths. He’d once thought he’d had another true friend in Meng Yao, but that was before he realized how many of their interactions had been staged with a deliberate goal in mind.

Before he realized that Meng Yao had never thought of him as anything other than a stepping stone.

And now Lan Xichen wanted them to become sworn brothers.

Nie Mingjue had been repulsed by the idea when he’d first broached it, only a day or two after the events in the Sun Palace. Becoming Lan Xichen’s sworn brother was nothing, but Meng Yao…? Before, maybe, but now…?

“A-Yao really did think he was doing the right thing,” Lan Xichen said, his eyes full of sincerity, and Nie Mingjue wondered when it’d become ‘A-Yao’. Lan Xichen didn’t even refer to Lan Wangji with such a term, though that might be more due to Lan Wangji being such a stickler for etiquette. “I know you think that he didn’t have to kill them, but he was the one who’d been there so long, who knew Wen Ruohan’s thinking – he couldn’t give up the opportunity we’d created at so much cost.”

The opportunity you created with my flesh and bones, Nie Mingjue wanted to say, but didn’t. He would have agreed if they’d ask, and surely that was the same as having agreed, wasn’t it? It would be petty to hold it against them.

It would be petty to continue feeling hurt. 

“And his attack on me at Langya?” he asked, his arms crossed. “After having engaged in the premeditated murder of one of his own superiors?”

“It’s more complicated than just that,” Lan Xichen said. “There were reasons – you can’t look at things as just black and white, Mingjue-xiong.”

Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure how planning to stab your own fellow soldiers in the back in a way designed to disguise their deaths as enemy casualties didn’t fall pretty firmly into the “unmitigated black” category. 

Oh, sure, Meng Yao had reasons, he always had reasons! But even if there was abuse, Meng Yao had had other options – if no one at Langya would list, he could have written a letter to Nie Mingjue himself to lay out his grievances; Nie MIngjue had already been acting as the overall commander of the war by then, and even Jin Guangshan’s thick face, pretending he didn’t know who Meng Yao was or that he’d never seen any letter, wouldn’t stand up to a direct conversation.

There were other things Meng Yao could have done, and he pointed them out to Lan Xichen.

“That’s all the more reason you should swear brotherhood with the two of us,” Lan Xichen said, and he was in earnest; he had always been so very earnest. “As the eldest, you would have the opportunity to help teach A-Yao how to walk on the right path, even when he feels he’s trapped. You were such good friends with him in the past – you could be friends again!”

It sounded more like responsibility than opportunity, but in the end Nie Mingjue really had liked Meng Yao once, really had had faith in him, and maybe Lan Xichen was right; maybe there was a good man under there, twisted only by desperate circumstances.

So he did it, gave his good name to a man he wasn’t sure he could trust, and that was just another thing on top of everything else he had to do: there was a war to finish, bodies to bury, the Unclean Realm to rebuild, politics to manage…it was all a mess, and one he had to tackle alone.

It wasn’t until the celebration at Phoenix Mountain that he finally had a chance to put down his burdens, even if only for a little while.

“Meng Yao,” he said, because the name Jin Guangyao felt more like an insult on his tongue. “Can you find someone for me?”

Lan Xichen had asked him to think of things he could ask Meng Yao to do, insisting that it would help mend their relationship for Meng Yao to feel wanted rather than merely scolded.

“Find someone?” Jin Guangyao echoed, turning to look at him. “Of course, da-ge. You need only ask. I’m only surprised – you don’t often ask about people in specific.”

Nie Mingjue supposed that was true.

“You’re helping with the resettlement of the Wen civilians, aren’t you?” he asked. 

The Jin sect had volunteered for the work, and it made sense: they were the wealthiest sect, capable of buying up land for the Wens to live on and paying for the wages of the men it would take to keep an eye on them until they could feel certain that they weren’t planning rebellion. It would be good for the Wen civilians to have some land where they could farm, an honest life they could lead, and it was probably better for them to live nearer to the Jin sect, which had suffered much less in the war, than risk anger elsewhere. 

“One of them is named Wen Qionglin,” he continued when Jin Guangyao nodded. “Skinny, like you, but taller – maybe half a head. Big eyes.”

“He must be a rare man indeed for da-ge to notice his eyes,” Jin Guangyao teased, though there was some expression Nie Mingjue didn’t recognize in his eyes. It was almost dark, something possessive and angry, but that didn’t make any sense. Perhaps he was only still irritated at how badly his first major event for the Jin sect had gone.

Nie Mingjue had only mentioned the eyes because at the time it’d seemed as if they were wide enough to take up half of his face, the boy as skittish as a rabbit; he shrugged, not wanting to talk about it too much. He’d made a decision based on pain and anger, and he still didn’t know if it had been the right one.  

“If you can find him for me, let me know where he is,” he said. “If you can’t, you can’t. It’s fine - I have other places I can look.”

-

In the end it hadn’t been Jin Guangyao who had found Wen Ning, but Wei Wuxian.

Nie Mingjue only heard about the whole disaster much later on – he’d assumed from Jin Guangyao’s silence that the boy had somehow managed to evade the Jin’s resettlement efforts and had turned to checking elsewhere.

He hadn’t been expecting to find him again as Wei Wuxian’s Ghost General.

That had been a shock, as had finding out about the boy’s identity – 

“He’s Wen Qing’s brother,” Jin Guangyao told him, later. “She ran a Supervisory Office in Yiling, caring for prisoners to make sure they stayed alive pending interrogation – torture, really. He assisted her…did you really think he was just a civilian, da-ge? You really shouldn’t let yourself be so easily deceived by an innocent smile.” 

– but in the end Nie Mingjue decided that it was still his responsibility to find out what had happened to the little Lan boy.

He went to Yiling.

There was a barrier at the bottom of the Burial Mounds that Nie Mingjue lightly touched with his saber – not enough to actually destroy it, which would cause a backlash, but enough to make the person who put it into place notice. It was little more than a means of knocking, really, but Wei Wuxian stormed down the mountain in an offended fury.

Perhaps Nie Mingjue had come on a bad day.

“You’re not welcome here,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not handing over the Stygian Tiger Seal, or the Wens – I want to be left alone.”

“I only –”

“I’ve already separated from the Jiang sect and been condemned by the entire cultivation world; what more do you want?! I’ve had enough. Wen Ning, make sure he leaves.” With that, he turned on his heel and went right back up the mountain, leaving Nie Mingjue blinking.

Wen Ning shuffled forward. His face was flat, seeming almost cruel in its indifference, but Nie Mingjue suspected that was just the stiffness of death. “He won’t come back down,” he said.

“That’s fine,” Nie Mingjue said, still somewhat taken aback by the sheer level of rudeness. “I came here to speak to you, anyway.”

Wen Ning blinked. “…me?”

“I wanted to check up on you,” Nie Mingjue said, feeling abruptly very awkward – Wen Ning had died, after all, and in bad enough circumstances that he’d risen up again as a fierce corpse. He couldn’t even be sure that the fierce corpse, however conscious, was still the Wen Ning he’d been before he died; some rumors suggested it was something else moving the body, some tool or dreadful summons of Wei Wuxian’s. “And the child.”

There was a moment of silence, when Nie Mingjue began to wonder as well, but finally Wen Ning stirred and spoke again.

“…he’s doing all right,” he said, and there was a small smile on his face. “Wei-gongzi took A-Yuan down the mountain to the village recently and he got a whole bunch of toys; he’s been very happy.”

“I’m glad,” Nie Mingjue said, and felt rather stiff himself. “I should have done more for him, the first time we met. I regretted it later, but couldn’t find you.”

“You looked?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. “When I was at the Phoenix Mountain hunt a few months back, I asked my sworn brother to check the Jin resettlement program, as he helps organize it,” he said. “He must have overlooked you somehow – I told him to look for Wen Qionglin; perhaps that was the issue.”

It didn’t seem especially likely, since Jin Guangyao had been able to find out about Wen Ning’s past, but he couldn’t think of any other reason why the normally efficient man would make such an oversight.  

Wen Ning was quiet for a long moment, a strange expression on his face. “What are your plans now, Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “What do you mean?”

“About A-Yuan. His parentage…”

“You said he was fine and happy,” Nie Mingjue pointed out, realizing that Wen Ning was probably worried that he’d insist on the boy returning to the Cloud Recesses. “I’m not…Lan Xichen is very busy with his own concerns, anyway, and if the child is happy, then nothing need change. And Wei-gongzi’s hysterics aside, Yiling is fairly well protected by him at the moment, so this is probably the safest place for him to be.”

The Jins were furious about what had happened; he wouldn’t trust the Wens with them right now. In fact…

“If the Jin sect start making trouble, my earlier offer to care for him is still valid,” he said, and this time he did have a token at his waist that he was able to offer up. “Given your actions during the war, it can no longer extend to you as well – assuming you can even leave Wei-gongzi’s side, anyway.”

“Who told you what I did during the war?” Wen Ning asked. “That sworn brother of yours again? Lianfeng-zun?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. “As I said, I asked him to look for you; he found out in passing about what was done under your sister’s command. I can’t offer succor to someone who helped torture my Nie cultivators, even in the guise of offering medical aid; there would need to be a trial, and passions are still inflamed. Better that you stay here.” There didn’t seem to be anything more to say: he’d found out what he’d wanted. “I’ll take my leave, then.”

Wen Ning slowly nodded. “Come back again sometime, Sect Leader Nie,” he requested, and even seemed sincere about it. “And – stay safe.”

It was a strange farewell, but Nie Mingjue supposed that the remnants of the Wen sect – and a fierce corpse, no less – would be more concerned than most about security and well-being.

-

“Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said, sitting on the floor next to Wei Wuxian’s working bench in the cave. “I have a question.”

“Is this about my sister’s wedding again? I’ve already accepted that I can’t go. You don’t have to keep worrying.”

“Not about that,” Wen Ning said. “Something else.” He hesitated. “I have a friend –”

Wei Wuxian dropped the half-finished compass of evil onto the workbench with a thunk and spun around to look at Wen Ning with a grin. “You have a friend? Go on.”

Wen Ning stared at him, bewildered.

“Everyone knows that asking for advice on behalf of a friend means asking for it for yourself!” Wei Wuxian sai, beaming. “Go on, tell me – do you like someone? Or is it something to do with your body –”

“It really is about a friend!” Wen Ning wailed, hiding his face behind his hands. “Or, well, not a friend. Someone I know. He’s the one with friends – bad friends.”

“Bad friends? What do you mean?”

Wen Ning peeked between his fingers, but Wei Wuxian appeared to have calmed down a bit from his earlier manic glee.

“I think,” he said, thinking very hard about his words before saying them, “that – this person I know, that he’s being manipulated by one, maybe more than one, of his friends. I don’t know why, but…I don’t know. It gives me a weird feeling. Like something bad is going to happen. And I don’t know if I should tell him or if that would only make things worse or…I don’t know.”

Wei Wuxian nodded, finally looking serious. “Is there a chance that we can drop the ambiguity?” he asked. “I can help better if I know who the people you’re talking about are.”

“It’s a bit sensitive. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble…”

Wei Wuxian looked around the cave pointedly. “I’m pretty sure we’ve offended everyone we could possibly offend already, Wen Ning.”

“…I think Chifeng-zun shouldn’t have sworn brotherhood with Lianfeng-zun and Zewu-jun,” Wen Ning said in a rush.

“I retract my previous statement,” Wei Wuxian said weakly. “What? How do you even – you consider Chifeng-zun a friend?”

“He was very nice the first time we met,” Wen Ning said.

“Chifeng-zun? Nice?”

Wen Ning shrugged.

“Okay,” Wei Wuxian said. “Okay. This is fine. You did in fact find the only three people in the cultivation world that I haven’t crossed yet, but – it’s fine. Okay. Let’s deal with this. What do you mean he’s being manipulated? And what’s wrong with Lan Xichen? He’s the real nice one.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t! It’s Lianfeng-zun that’s the problem, I think.”

“I haven’t heard anything bad about him, other than the fact that he runs whenever Chifeng-zun appears,” Wei Wuxian said. “But then again, rumor doesn’t get you very far, or else we’d be living in a palace of blood and gore right now – emphasis on palace. It’d probably have better washroom facilities than we have.” He sighed and shook his head. “What makes you say what you’re saying?”

“I’m not sure…it’s probably nothing. They didn’t pay any attention to Chifeng-zun when he’d been tortured, letting him walk around where he could’ve been killed, and then they swore brotherhood before his wounds had even scabbed over, and I swear they must have pushed him into it, what with the way he treats Lianfeng-zun...Anyway, then there’s everything that’s been happening with Lianfeng-zun and me - ”

“…you know what, let’s focus to that,” Wei Wuxian said, holding his head as if it hurt. “What has Lianfeng-zun to do with you?”

“Chifeng-zun asked him to look for me, a few months ago, and he deliberately didn’t tell him where I was,” Wen Ning said. “And he also told him a bunch of stuff about what I did during the war that’s really not true – he thought I was involved in torturing people, and I wasn’t, I swear! – and anyway, I don’t know why he’d do that. Sworn brothers shouldn’t lie to each other, should they?”

“Generally speaking, no,” Wei Wuxian said. “Okay, yes, that’s all a bit suspicious; that bit with him exaggerating what you did during the war sure sounds like he’s abusing Chifeng-zun’s trust to isolate us even more. But what’s wrong with Lan Xichen? He’s Lan Zhan’s older brother – I like him.”

Wen Ning nibbled on his lower lip. “It’s not what he did,” he said slowly. “It’s only…okay, let me tell you a story. There was an uncle I liked once. He’d been a guest cultivator, but he married one of my cousins, and he was really nice to me; I used to go over to see him a few times a week. And then one day my sister told me I couldn’t talk to him anymore because he was gone: she’d had him ejected from the sect because she’d found out that he beat his wife.”

Wei Wuxian nodded.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Wen Ning said. “He was always really nice to me, you know? He’d never raised a hand or behaved badly where I could see. A bunch of other people hadn’t believed it, either, for the same reasons. He behaved well, he had a good reputation, he smiled…my cousin tried to kill herself. That’s how my sister found out, and she believed her. And she was right, too.”

“Lan Xichen is as nice in private as he is in public, though.”

“No, you don’t understand – I don’t think he’s the guest cultivator in the story. I think he’s me. Me and all the other ones that refused to believe what was going on even if we saw the signs, just because we liked him so much. He wouldn’t have gotten away with it for as long as he did if we all hadn’t been willing to defend him.”

“So you think Lianfeng-zun is the one that’s up to something in secret,” Wei Wuxian said slowly, fingers drumming on his leg. “And Lan Xichen is acting, however inadvertently, as his shield…Chifeng-zun would definitely believe whatever Lan Xichen told him. That’s probably how he got captured in Yangquan to begin with, actually; that makes a lot of sense. But what benefit would there be to Lianfeng-zun to manipulating Chifeng-zun into hating you? Hating us?” 

He frowned. “Do you think the Jin sect is planning on trying something against us here at Yiling, and Lianfeng-zun is trying to get Chifeng-zun on board? I know the Jin sect wants my Stygian Tiger Seal, while the Nie sect has never much cared about it…this could be serious.”

Wen Ning nodded.

“One question, though. You said he deliberately knew where you were and didn’t tell him – are you sure about that? That’s the key point, at least to me: getting your past in the war wrong, that could be a mistake, and we don’t know if there was some sort of earlier agreement about what happened in the Sun Palace. How do you know Lianfeng-zun knew where you were?”

“He visited,” Wen Ning said, and looked down at his hands, which were clenched so hard that the knuckles were white. “He looked right at me while he was talking to some of the guards. And…”

He trailed off.

“And?”

“And then I died, Wei-gongzi,” Wen Ning said solemnly. “Less than a day later, the guards he was talking to killed me.”

-

“Not that I’m not always happy to see you, Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang said, ignoring the way that he could feel his sect elders a few rooms over bursting into flame in sheer rage without ever realizing why, and also the way his elder brother was going to break both his legs if he ever found out that this was what Nie Huaisang was doing with the role of acting Sect Leader in his absence, “but…why are you here again?”

“To save your brother!” Wei Wuxian said with a grin. “Also possibly to get your thoughts on what a good wedding gift for my sister would be. I can’t decide whether to go with something fancy, heartfelt, or crude.”

“Don’t go with fancy, the Jin sect has all the fancy they need for a lifetime,” Nie Huaisang said at once, because that much he could answer. “And – wait, what was that about saving my brother?”

“Also, I may need to marry Lan Zhan in order to finalize an adoption,” Wei Wuxian said thoughtfully, as if he wasn’t blowing up explosives in Nie Huaisang’s brain with every word. “He doesn’t know about it yet. Do you think you can find someone who can officiate?”

“My brother can do it, he’s technically an elder in the Lan sect by virtue of being sworn brothers with their sect leader,” Nie Huaisang said, mouth moving on automatic. “And – what? Marriage? Adoption? Not know about – also, can we go back to the bit about saving my brother?”

[mc-critical]

So I honestly thought of this ask from the Dilruba ask you got that spoke about Safiye’s idolization of Hürrem and Nurbanu. It makes me think, I felt like in observing Safiye’s character, she exhibited a phenomenon in which you’ve spoke of before, in which she reached a point of her life where she completely internalized and became the toxicity in her enviornment. I feel like she put Hürrem and Nurbanu on such a pedestal (especially with Nurbanu having treated her so terribly) is because she adapted a Social darwanist mindset of sorts which caused her to firmly believe that those who were/are “strong/worthy” were those who succeeded within the system by any means necessary, even if that meant killing and harming even those closest to them. It felt to me almost as if she came to “understand” Nurbanu’s stance towards her or even sympathized with it albeit in a strange, traumatized way? Or when she wanted to pass down her ring to Kösem after she suceeded in killing Iskender, it was almost like she wanted to congratulate Kösem on being able to kill her son. It’s interesting, like her entire moral compass was completely warped having been in the harem for so long and in unlike any way I can recall seeing on other sultanas in either franchise. I don’t remember Mahi/Hürrem coming to idolize Hafsa later in their lives but this could also be because the SOW time period was still relatively fresh in their time and Hafsa may not have wielded or exhibited as much power as Nurbanu may have as a valide sultan. What do you think?

Yes, Safiye as a character is the embodiment of these destrustive philosophies to the extreme. The toxic system leaves no one untouched and she is indeed one of the characters in the SOW and in the franchise overall that is the most affected by it.

Unlike Hürrem and Nurbanu, where we get a solid exploration of what exactly made them this way, with Safiye we have the philosophy set at the very start, her introduction sets many things clear. We know that she loves power. We know that she wants to keep that power until the end of time. Her role as an antagonist is revealed immediately in her unwillingness to give up her power. One may find her a little less multi-faceted, precisely because her motivations were more vague than the rest- we don't get anything outright with her, we don't get much insight. We're left to figure things out by ourselves. That doesn't make her a cardboard cut out however, given that we have very vague reasoning, but with enough context to see what's behind it. I find her "backstory" counterpart very interesting in that she could only be used to drive a contrast between MC E139 Safiye and MCK Safiye, be presented as the former shadow of Safiye's self, what she has previously been. With only a single scene we technically have her foundation, but what is retroactively set-up (her worship of Hürrem aside) is completely turned on its head. MC E139 Safiye is perceptive that one day you have to step out of power, but that's the primary dilemma of MCK Safiye, the very thing she refuses to do. It's hinted that she has had many, too many years of power in the harem and it's not only something she has become used to, it's much more than that: it's as if she's had this power her whole life. The prospect of her losing it has become truly unthinkable, out of reach. She has gained an self-image of greatness that would always "sustain" the castle and preserve its life force. She's accustomed to endless, limitless power. She has set her own network of people. She loves every aspect of this power: both the simple and the complex stuff, from her long morning routine to her orchestrating things from the inside. Her power as a concept alone is her whole being and I don't think she ever separated herself from her royal demeanor. She is always power and majesty and splendor everywhere, from her dresses, to her mannerisms, to her constant addressing of herself as "we", taken from European courts.

I agree that she values power as something for herself and something that is hers by right, not for the advantages or disadvantages it may bring. Safiye doesn't care about that: as long as she's there and in power, it would all be fine, it would be enough. Safiye has her own distorted understanding of applying power: she speaks constantly about the dynasty and the country (just like many sultanas), but she leaves them aside completely when she's threatened. And she doesn't view what she does as morally right, she's always ready to play dirty in order to maintain her own accomplishments and to outplay everyone else. She actually resorts to dirtier and dirtier tricks the more she loses her power. I did mention when paralleling and contrasting her with Kösem in another ask of yours that Safiye, unlike Kösem, doesn't focus her efforts on reaching out to the people, she is a lone wolf when it comes to power and she is projecting indisputable superiority on everyone she's in front of. The closest relationship she has is with Bülbül and even that is merely an addition to Safiye and the result of him being the person always next to her and fills all her whims much more than it is all genuine affection. The Darwinian philosophy is what she lives by; and the notion that she gave the ring to Kösem because of her starting to respect another person's own power except for her own, admitting that someone has outplayed her, doing it only because someone has outplayed her, is really important. Her arc was about finally accepting defeat after deluding herself for so long that no one could truly eclipse her, but then again, has she gotten completely over her toxic environment? Hardly. Because once again, by giving the ring, she symbolically continues the SOW cycle that has, in the show, many toxic aspects especially when it comes to power. Safiye could respect people only when they keep up for longer than she anticipates, have been tied up to her in a more "unconventional" way and have a (previously and contemporarily) good position on the hierarchy. She did accept Kösem as a rival at the end of the day, in part probably because she started off as someone loyal to Safiye and evolved way past that, but didn't accept Handan, because she couldn't face it that someone like her, someone she perceived as weaker, can now rule over her. I saw Safiye as someone finding disobedience from a person previously loyal to her more challanging than a permanent, irreparable change of the hierarchy she is strongly dissatisfied with. Her elitism is so strong that she doesn't go past it even when there is a change in position. She doesn't get over that biased, stereotypical thinking.

She worships this Darwinist philosophy in Hürrem, that she's the strongest survivor, that she has prevailed over her opponents, without having the chance to know the bigger picture and has heard only the banter of someone who is still biased to her after all (Mihrimah). She shares this philosophy with S02B post-E59 and S04 Hürrem in even scarier extremes and that's what she has set as an example for herself. It's true that she takes this mindset from this cult to Hürrem, too. This very disrupting cult of hers. But then again, I never saw her sympathizing with Nurbanu, per say? She's perfectly able to acknowledge Nurbanu's cruelty and correct me if I'm wrong, but the only praise I recall for her is her being the most beautiful (but the cruelest) sultana she's ever known? Which in no way indicates sympathy. But I wouldn't brush off at all Safiye viewing fer experiences with Nurbanu as the twist of fate, in which she has prevailed after all, but could acknowledge the ones before her. (but not after her, Kösem aside.) Safiye isn't that kind of person that would show in any way that she has experienced trauma, but she could've brushed said trauma even deeper within than other characters, to the point that her direction even would never ever indirectly hint at it, keeping her usual regality in check.

[Hürrem did say she set Valide as her own example in her last words to her in E61, but I get how it could be missed when she also lamented their previous, not so good experiences and told her about Nigar and Ibrahim, which put an end to Valide's life. Mahidevran, on the other hand, never mentioned Valide post-S03 outside of saying that they would bury Fatma in Ayşe Hafsa's mosque (was it?). They both mourned her death, but interestingly enough, both of them have "violated" her memory in some way by wanting her chambers. Mahidevran wanted the chambers to set her own model in the castle during her harem ruling period, while Hürrem wanted it to show she could one-up everyone, for them to respect her the way she thought she deserved. There truly wasn't this worship to such extent as in MCK, also because it presented the beginning of the SOW rather than the peak of it. There wasn't much to blindly praise there, hence the effect wouldn't be as strong.]

[bagpipes-or-bust]

National Acadian Day

Words from Luc Charles Daigle...

Just about a month to go, it will be Acadian Day. A day to remember our survival and celebrate our cultural awareness. The following I have borrowed from Wikipedia for a bit of history of how the day came to be chosen. To celebrate, I may have another go at making Poutin Rappee, I've got a month to get it right.

National Acadian Day

The National Acadian Day is observed in parts of Canada each year on August 15, to celebrate Acadian culture. It was during the first National Convention of the Acadians held at Memramcook, New Brunswick, in 1881 that the Acadian leaders received the mandate to set the date of this celebration, which is also the feast of the Assumption of Mary.

The choice of the date was the object of a debate at the convention between those wishing for Acadians to celebrate June 24, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, and National Day of French Canadians since 1834 and National Holiday of Quebec since 1977, and others wishing the celebration to occur on August 15.

The arguments put forth by those who favoured June 24 were:

Acadians must unite with the other francophone Canadians in common objectives before the anglophone majority of Canada.

August 15 occurs during harvest, so it would be difficult for all to be free for the celebration.

The arguments put forth by those who favoured August 15 were:

The Acadians constitute a distinct nationality/ethnicity and must adopt their own national day.

 The adoption of a national day distinct from that of French Canadians will not prevent unity between the two peoples.

June 24 occurs during seeds, so it would be equally difficult for all to be free for the celebration.

August 15 is Assumption Day, Catholic celebration of Virgin Mary, patron saint of the Acadians.

During this period of time, a good number of people among the Acadian leaders were traditionalists wishing for the conservation of the values and customs of pre-revolutionary France. This did not however prevent the Acadians from adopting a tricolor flag three years later at the Miscouche convention. Abbot Marcel-François Richard, who favoured August 15, is believed to have had an influence on the decision with the speech he gave at the convention. He said:

In fact, it seems to me that a people who, for over a century of hardships and persecutions, was able to preserve its religion, language, customs and autonomy, must have acquired enough importance to affirm its existence in a solemn way; and this could not be accomplished better than by being able to celebrate its own national holiday... Allow me, at this time, to point out a few of the motives that will encourage you to choose Our Lady of Assumption as National Acadian Day instead of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Since Canadians have chosen Saint-Jean-Baptiste as their patron, it seems to me that unless you wish to mistake our nationality with theirs, it is crucial that Acadians choose a particular holiday. It is important to stress that we are not descendants of Canada, but of France. Consequently, I see no reason why we should adopt the Saint-Jean-Baptiste as our national holiday... We must choose a holiday that reminds us of our origin. I am even going to go as far as to affirm that the Assumption has always been, and must always remain, National Acadian Day, since Acadians are descendants of the French race. Louis XIII vowed to give his empire to the Blessed Virgin and he wanted the Assumption to be the kingdom's national holiday. However, not long afterwards, he sent colonists to take over Acadia. They did, however, have to bring the customs of their homeland along, and if unfortunate circumstances prevented them from celebrating their national holiday in a regular manner, it is true that the national devotion of the Acadians is their devotion to Mary.

In the end, the members present at the convention decided on August 15. The Vatican ratified the choice of the Acadian convention many years later in a proclamation issued on January 19, 1938.

The Parliament of Canada made National Acadian Day an official Canadian holiday on June 19, 2003.

National Acadian Day is often dubbed by Acadians in Chiac as "Quinze zou des fous" (Quinze-Août des Fous) or simply "Quinze zou"

[1-lightofjustice]

Justice for Awashima Seri

One of my latest posts made me want to re-watch K Project Return of Kings, especially Scepter 4 segment. And damn, there are so many things that happened to Awashima and frankly she didn’t deserve it. I’m not talking about GoRa’s overly disgusting fanservice attempts on Seri, although that’s indeed something that must be protested. I’m talking about how she was kept in dark by her two megane colleagues (mainly Munakata) even though she’s Second in Command of Scepter 4 and someone who has been working besides them for years. After I finished rewatching..... wow it’s worse than I remembered. My heart truly breaks for Seri, and I’m super glad that in the end she got her happy ending (by punching Munakata’s face). Like first, we know how worried she was about Munakata’s state, and after Reisaru’s fight in episode 8, Seri was so worried about Fushimi’s wellbeing and his bedding. Then at the very beginning of her role in episode 9, we have this :

For almost anyone besides Seri, maybe they will not think too much about the fact that they can’t understand what the hell are on Munakata and Fushimi’s heads, after all they’re not the easiest people to understand. But for Seri, it’s quite a new unpleasant territory for her. There’s a reason why she’s the Second in Command after Munakata, why she can easily command the rebel Fushimi without many protests from the said rebel, and why she can work alongside cryptic geniuses like Munakata and Fushimi. From R:B novel, we know that she’s an all-round achiever, but one of her main virtue is she’s goddamn observant. She more or less can understand Munakata’s unique mindset, and she mostly can see right through Fushimi’s bullshit. She more often can hit ‘100 point mark’ regarding the enigmatic Munakata and the ‘absolute tsundere’ Fushimi than any other human being except each other. Like on Munakata’s case, we have this :

Yoshino continued. “An ordinary man would have an interest in nude females, I think, but this is the Captain we’re talking about… How is it for him, what do you think?” She looked up at Awashima.

Awashima’s lips curved into a stiff smile as she took her time to think.

Then she drew a breath and, “I haven’t given that subject a thought until now. But well, if I had to answer…” She shook her head. “This is what I think: in the Captain’s case, it’s entirely possible that never once in his life he has so much as opened that kind of magazines or, alternatively, stores an entire thousand book collection of obscene materials in his room, and I won’t be surprised in the least in either case. Would this suffice as an answer?” Munakata Reishi’s right hand woman and Lieutenant, Awashima Seri, said with an even more strained smile.

 Case Files of Blue Chapter 1 (and looking at how eager Munakata asked Hidaka to show his collection, suffice to say that Awashima is absolutely correct about her answer).

Awashima: But, well, for the Captain it’s probably of equal value. Fushimi: Of equal value? What is? Awashima: Protecting this country’s peace and fulfilling his promise to a kindergartener.

Optician Drama CD

And on Fushimi’s case :

“…It might not be a misunderstanding, you know. What if I were in cahoots with Homura?” he retorted, lips pursed.

For a moment, Awashima’s eyes widened slightly before narrowing to slits as she humphed letting a slight smirk tug on her lips. “Suppose there really is a traitor who’s trembling while covered in cold sweat; I’d say at the very least it’s safe to assume he’s not switching sides because he likes it. It’s time for your report. The materials are ready, I hope?”

The King and The Traitor 

“It’s hard to call realistic, I have to agree with you on that. And on the off chance that it indeed is a strain’s doing, there is hardly any ground to claim harm sustained from the act. It’s the rainy season, after all. So I do find the idea of wasting time and manpower on investigating this possibility unreasonable, especially considering that we hardly have any to spare, but… if it’s an order from my superior officer, I will look into it though?”

It was said curtly and emotionlessly, but Awashima let out a little chuckle, hearing Fushimi’s answer. “Then look into it for me. Since like me, my competent and capable subordinate, too, seems to be concerned with this matter.”

Endless Rain

Also in anime, she noticed Yata’s worry for Mikoto and informed him about Mikoto’s condition to calm him. After breaking Sarumi’s fight, instead of asking apology, she demanded Fushimi to show her the result of his investigation, knowing full well that Fushimi already did some digging before he confronted Yata. She made the remark about only a King can attract another King. Heck, she already deduced that the reason why Munakata kept Zenjou-san on Scepter 4 is to kill Munakata one day, even though Munakata understandably never told anyone about it. During ROK, I kinda got feeling like Munakata and Fushimi were purposely ‘ghosting’ her, but looking at how observant she is, it’s quite understandable why Munakata and Fushimi kept Awashima in the dark to preserve their secret mission (still jerk move for them though). 

I think that’s one of the reason why Fushimi gave the hint about his secret mission only to Yata. Not only Yata is his best friend, but he also can count on Yata’s insensitiveness, having been the victim first-hand in the past. Like, Fushimi who is surprisingly responsible and dutiful for his job maybe thought “it’s fine to give Misaki a hint, it’s not like he can pick it up anyway”, so he can feel ‘less guilty’ for endangering the secrecy of his mission. Not that he’s wrong though, I mean Yata you’re a good guy but I have to say you really have a fine thick-head for not noticing and still saying that Fushimi betrayed the Blues, Fushimi jumped from sinking ship after Fushimi uttered such a vague sentence and after knowing that Fushimi secretly asked your brother to quit Jungle. Thank God Munakata gave him clear explanation later. Instead for Awashima, she only got this :

In that brief moment of silence, Fushimi let Awashima knew 3 things :

1. He joined Green clan and willing to attack his ‘former’ clansmen for them.

2. Not only joined Green clan, but he’s now one of J-ranker of Jungle. You know, the true Green clansmen, the one they have to be most cautious like Sukuna and Yukari.

3. He allied with one of Green clansman who participated on Anna’s kidnapping and former Scepter 4′s prisoner.

And he didn’t give Awashima and Kusanagi anything except complete silence and green-laced knife-throwing. Mission accomplished! The monkey succeeds on fooling the strong-willed and observant Lieutenant of Scepter 4. Just like the phrase “To fool your enemy, fool your friends”, there’s no way Awashima can perceive that except as complete betrayal. Haha.

(Truly, Fushimi was so good at executing his job. Too good, actually).

Then, after that shocking revelation that can shake someone’s mentality, she still had duty to report it toward her superior. Look at her reaction after Munakata said things about biting the giver’s hand.

(OMG watching that scene after knowing about Fushimi and Munakata’s secret mission made me truly itch to punch a certain King’s beautiful sparkly face).

She blamed herself for failing to look after Fushimi. I read some posts about Fushimi’s betrayal speculation before ROK episode 11 was aired, those who predicted that Fushimi joined Green for real, almost all expected Yata to stop Fushimi and made him go back to Scepter 4 (or Homra). While I understand the potential Sarumi heartbreaking angst and their another flashy fighting scene, I can’t help but think, can Yata do it? Not that I doubt strong bond between them, but Yata and Fushimi are equal in power. Okay, Yata is stronger in raw power, but Fushimi proved himself can accommodate his power effectively to match Yata. We know from their fight in Ashinaka Gakuen that Fushimi’s dual-color status can pass Yata’s defense, just like an attack can pass the defense from the same aura. Then Fushimi got his Green Aura. I didn’t say that Yata surely would lose to Fushimi on that situation, but it’s understandable if he lost and no one will blame him. But Seri? She’s canonly stronger than Fushimi, she’s usually can keep Fushimi on check in Scepter 4 and Seri is his direct superior after Munakata. I think if indeed Fushimi joined Green clan, the ones that have a chance to win battling him are Seri, Kusanagi, Kuro, and Kings. I can see Awashima blamed herself for failing to stop Fushimi and wanted to compensate for that failure by bringing Fushimi back to Scepter 4.

So, as if that burden is not heavy enough, Munakata brought Zenjou to his side and Awashima, who already worried about Munakata’s safety for a whole season and more, got an honor to watch on front seat as this happened :

Her King had a sword pointed toward his neck, but Awashima wasn’t fast enough to even touch her saber. Munakata’s Second in Command, who just realized that preventing her King’s Damocles Down is her responsibility, was shown the fact that she was not fast enough in comparison with Zenjou. Just, let’s imagine some time between episode 9 and 11 Seri looked at her saber, lamented at the fact that she failed to stop Fushimi and she was not fast enough to fulfil her most hurtful responsibility. Imagine Seri tried to get a hold of herself, readied herself to point her sword toward her closest comrades. 

Of course her torment didn’t end there. The Quack Prime Minister fired Munakata from his duty, removed him from Scepter 4. And Munakata, wordlessly, without giving any words or announcements toward his clansmen...  

(SERIOUSLY GIVE HER A BREAK! MUNAKATAAAAA!!!!)

I feel like that scene is the peak of Munakata’s “ghosting” toward Awashima. Not to mention, her (and Scepter 4) next order is :

(Help! My poor clueless ducklings are trapped while their genius jerk megane superiors are carelessly walking toward suicide plans!).

Honorary mention for the rest of poor lost ducklings :

(Yes, Munakata, you can’t just leave without any words toward your clansmen. Especially when you literally walked toward your death).

(BTW the meaning of “one unthinkable thing happening after another” is Fushimi’s betrayal followed by Munakata’s resignation. Little appreciation that they thought Fushimi’s betrayal is “unthinkable thing” even though the fact that Fushimi’s status as Homra’s “traitor” is widely known in Scepter 4).

 (Zenjou-san and the rest of Scepter 4 are not amused by your secret plan shenanigans, Munakata and Fushimi. Zenjou thought that those jerks truly ruin meganes’ reputation. Unbeknown to him, Enomoto thought the same).

Well, we know what happened after this. Seri and the rest of Special Squad got their first clue about what the heck is happened from a freaking TV, they rushed toward their King, the show was shifted to Silvers and Reds and NO SCEPTER 4 REUNION OR SETTLEMENT EVEN THOUGHT GORA CRAFTED SUCH A BIG AND COMPLEX CONFLICT IN SCEPTER 4.

Well, at least Seri got to punch Munakata in the face, even though in my opinion she truly deserved more after all the shits she had been through.

[crustacean-on-main]

Libertarianism and Territoriality

A while ago, I got involved in a kerfluffle with esteemed tumblr user @shieldfoss in which I unwisely threatened to longpoast at him about politics. Turns out, there is demand for this post (hello @samueldays), so now I actually have to write it. Ugh.

content warning: the following poast is ramblomatic

So, to get the preliminaries out of the way -- tumblr is an extremely unsearchable website, and this isn’t meant to be a character assassination, so it’s both entirely possible and disturbingly probable that the things I will be arguing against correspond poorly or, in the worst case, not at all to things shieldfoss actually believes. Therefore, I will be arguing against a cloud of beliefs that I feel to be common enough among self-described libertarians and hope thereby to make perhaps a more general point.

At the heart of this discussion is the question of whether believing territoriality is immoral is incompatible with other ideals of libertarianism. We’re already running into the problem of extremely ill-defined terms, so we’ll have to clarify here. Territoriality is the easier one; we’ll specify that we mean a belief in the right of a group of people to eject or exclude others from territory that they hold in common or over which they have power. “Libertarianism” is the thornier one, so it might take longer to get at the essence here. For the discussion of borders, the common beliefs that are more or less relevant are a belief in the primacy of property rights, a belief in contractualism, being favorable to freedom of association and being deeply suspicious of government in general, but especially where government regulation could interfere with any of the former three. Now, let us look at a small-scale hypothetical example to illustrate the issue under discussion. Imagine a village in rural Pennsylzhopiya, populated largely by very devout members of some sect -- call them the Ruritanians -- who believe very fervently in Jesus Christ and Not Smoking Tobacco. One day they are surprised to learn that the United States has been taken over by the Libertarian Revolution and will henceforth be governed as a minarchy. Mindful of their new powers, they immediately pool all their property in a new entity called the Ruritanian Corporation of Pennsylzhopiya, that has a charter which prevents it from selling any of its property outright, and gives the religious community of Ruritanians deciding power in what it can do with its land. Meanwhile, in Philomena, the capital city of Pennsylzhopiya, imagine a neighborhood of people whose politics can be summed up as “progressive, but skeptical of big government”. Delighted at the news of the revolution, they do nothing in particular, because they already own their houses. They expect their lives to improve as a consequence of decreased regulation. Inspired by the political upheaval, some outsiders move to the Ruritanian community. They cannot buy Ruritanian land, but they can lease it at a low price provided they swear not to blaspheme Jesus Christ or Smoke Tobacco. Some of them fail to uphold this code; the Ruritanian council votes to end their leases and eject them from Ruritanian property. Others convert, using funds they have saved up to buy further land and add it to the common possession of the Ruritanian community. Ruritanians benefit from the light of the Libertarian Revolution. Meanwhile, in the libertarian neighborhood, a more unpleasant sort of radical fundamentalist Ruritanians has bought a house after the previous owner moved away. They have taken up picketing in public squares around the neighborhood, condemning public tobacco smoking. Since they by and large aren’t doing anything illegal, and the owner of the public squares, the city council, remains bound to the U.S. constitution, which was reaffirmed after the Libertarian Revolution, their neighbors are in a bit of a pickle. They did not take advantage of the new legal regime to create an entity exercising power in their name, if only because they don’t trust each other enough to give up private ownership of their homes, so they can’t do anything about the picketers. As time passes, more Ruritanian fundamentalists move to Philomena, eventually creating a sufficiently large nuisance for their liberal neighbors that most of them move away, creating a newly fundamentalist Ruritanian neighborhood that can in turn use its power to create new corporations to make sure the neighborhood stays Ruritanian. I assume most of my readers know where this is going, so let’s consider the final case: what if the Ruritanians didn’t form such a corporation but left their lands privately owned? They’d be vulnerable to the exact same tactic, since once property is legitimately acquired, there is no way to dislodge its owner. The real, non-libertarian United States contains many examples of this kind of hostile takeover of neighborhoods between groups, largely accomplished by application of force that was either within the bounds of the law or not cracked down on by whatever higher authority should have. The upshot of all this is that if you truly care about freedom of association with all it entails -- essentially, the right to choose your neighbors -- then you are left with the uncomfortable reality that if you have no sovereignty over the territory you occupy, you can’t choose shit; this is, of course, not a problem with a hypothetical libertarian society only, as history attests. Libertarians for their part tend to answer this criticism in one of several ways. The first is basically “well if you have a problem you can leave”, or the exit-only approach. This is in my opinion not workable on a large scale outside of the US, and probably not even there, but is at least philosophically consistent. The second is giving up this freedom as a value, at which point you just collapse into progressivism with a procedural fetish. The most interesting answer is a variation on “would your neighbors sell to people whose values are so different from theirs?”. I think that the answer tends to be: yes, they would. Unless there is a powerful compulsion on every single one of those neighbors not to sell to certain people, they have no incentive to forgo their personal material gain or convenience for the benefit of their neighbors, especially if, say, they were moving away anyway. You also cannot really create such a compulsion in a libertarian society unless it already exists, since you’d have to surrender your very real privileges, your absolute property rights, to the community in order to benefit from collective organisation this way, and that is extremely unlikely to happen unless you are already a fundamentalist Ruritanian. Conceivably an intentional community of some kind could pull it off, but that’s basically answer one in material terms. The tl;dr here is that in my experience a lot of libertarians claim to care about the benefits of social cohesion, or at the very least presuppose that you already have it, but don’t give a lot of thought to how it might be obtained or preserved once you have it. It’s true that a libertarian state could actually help buttress it if your group already has fanatical levels of asabiyyah, by expanding the things you’re allowed to do with yourself contractually, but for most people that doesn’t apply. Indeed, we see that even in our non-libertarian versions of capitalism, the combination of market forces and upward concentration of force is extremely corrosive to this sort of group cohesion. The final consequence of this is that a libertarian society (again, defined as above) would be extremely vulnerable to collapsing into what we have now, if not worse -- there is neither incentive nor means for anyone to defend against concentration of power into the moneyed few who control the largest international corporations. I’ve limited myself in the examples to discussion of small-scale examples, but it’s trivial to see what happens if you extend the same principles to national borders. If nations all had open borders, no tariffs and homogenized legal systems recognizing the primacy of property rights, you would get the worst kind of cyberpunk dystopia, where the biggest capital interests could essentially do whatever the fuck they wanted. I think many libertarians were attracted to the ideology by the depredations of large organizations like this, and probably believe in the romanticized freedom of the smallholder more than the freedom of international capital, which is why I originally called this position incoherent. The ideal of individual freedom is a foil, something to distract from the fact that if you remove all intermediaries, you’re left with the leviathan on top and individuals immediately subject to it.

[hijitae]

HijiTae – What Hijikata would be like for Tae, Part 1

There is something I’ve noticed for a long time when it comes to Tae ships. More often than not, people’s arguments to support their chosen Tae ship tend to focus on what Tae can do or does for the other person. It’s always about how Tae is the best person for [character] because she does this and she does that; it’s always about whether Tae is good enough or not for the other person (usually in ships with a man, as it’s not so much an issue in her ship with Kyuubei). These types of arguments tend to place Tae in a secondary, servile role in her own relationship: somebody who is always there to welcome people home and not do anything else. There is rarely a focus on her goals or the values she’s expressed in desiring from a partner.

I don’t want HijiTae to become that sort of ship where people only focus on what Tae can do for Hijikata. I seek a more balanced view. Thus, this series: what Hijikata would be like for Tae as a partner. (That said, at some point there will be another series about what Tae would be like for Hijikata as a partner in order to address the misconceptions that often arise from people who are firmly fixated on only one particular Hijikata ship from the past when HijiTae is a ship that challenges status quo, acknowledges the possibility of Second Love, and moves forward into the future.)

Tae is a goal-oriented person, who likely has experienced the anxiety that comes with a background of instability and debt. Keeping a steady job and creating a life of stability is what she does throughout the series. She is also very traditional and responsible with a great inner strength that has carried her through grief and loss. She often sacrifices her own wants and needs for the sake of others. She doesn’t sit around and wait for things to happen; she gets up and goes out and does what needs to be done. She evolves from a debt-ridden girl who takes on a hostess job to make ends meet to a woman who oversees an entire district/town as a Deva, and she builds her own side business even after restoring her family dojo. She has accomplished much since when we first met her.

So, where can Hijikata fit into all of this? Well, today’s topic is Money. (It’s also the only section I had finished. I only work on posts like this when I have time and feel like it. I still have an entire unfinished analysis I began over a decade ago.)

Note: the discussion below doesn’t mean no one else is capable. I talk only of the Hijikata side of things for Tae’s sake because this is a HijiTae post. Naysayers and the uninterested can keep scrolling past this.

HijiTae and Financial Stability

Now, I’m not saying Tae would marry purely for money for the sake of her dojo. But in the Soul Switch arc, it’s not enough that two good-looking guys are seemingly vying for her attention – she has to compare their salaries, too. She isn’t necessarily concerned with who has the most money, hence the focus on “annual income.” Rather, she cares about financial security and the means to maintain that. Notice that it is the first item she reveals from her list of criteria. 

Tae grew up with her father’s debts passed onto her (debts that came from her father’s friend, we learn), and she was close to losing the family dojo because of a lack of money. So, we can infer that the Shimura family wasn’t comfortably well off, but they managed to make ends meet. She is willing to take on any kind of job just to get the money to keep the dojo and continue to provide for Shinpachi. When she first thinks Shinpachi is messing around instead of being at his job, she strongly disapproves. Tae knows the doubt and anxiety that comes from having no money or not having enough to keep what’s important to her.

I don’t want to ship Tae with anyone who might give her cause for financial doubt or anxiety. In the Host Club arc, she said of Vegeta, “Being a super Saiyan doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a job” (and as I’ve mentioned before here, her favourite DBZ character is Bardock, who has similarities to Hijikata). In Soul Switch arc, she wants time to compare annual incomes before making a decision on a suitor. Love is important to her, but so is financial stability. Tae has some income of her own, mainly through her job, as I’m not sure if being a Deva is financially profitable. Either way, I’d like her to live a life where she doesn’t have to be the sole person remembering to pay bills on time or worrying about falling into debt.

Hijikata has a stable job and he doesn’t spend frivolously. True, he once wanted to invest lottery money in mayonnaise, but there are two points to consider:

• He wasn’t considering wildly spending his hard-earned money but rather a prize-earned reward. • He is the type to consider financial investment over immediately spending it all (might also be safe to say that he isn’t in any debt, either).

He is also shown once to have bought a cabinet, which tells me that he is likely to make practical purchases (one time he didn’t was because he was possessed by an otaku spirit; it was not by his own doing). Buying a cabinet to furnish his living space expresses a desire for organization and long-term use. It’s not like he’s just buying a random product with no lasting value.

When his soul became trapped in Gintoki’s body, one of the first things Hijikata did was make sure that Kagura and Shinpachi are paid their wages and in a timely manner because he knows how important it is to maintain the morale of your employees/subordinates to ensure that they likewise put their best foot forward. He also set out to pay the rent right away because he’s strictly responsible about such things.

Hijikata would be more than able to provide Tae the financial security she values. If she married Hijikata, Tae would gain a spouse who would help ensure that there is always a roof over their heads and food on the table. She would appreciate that Hijikata knows the value of money, and she can trust him not to spend their money thoughtlessly. She would also appreciate that Hijikata thinks of a long-term future with his money (which is a must when it comes to children, and yes, I’m thinking of Togoro). I don’t think he would mind helping to preserve her family dojo, which brings me to another point that I will save for next time.

[de-profundis-ad-astra]

CHARACTER INTRO || Marlene Walcroft Writeblr Masterlist

Quick Facts:

Story | Wretches and Kings Age | Unknown Gender | Female Sexuality | Pan-Demisexual Occupation | Criminal Kingpin Face Claim | Jessica Chastain Hogwarts House | Slytherin MBTI | ISTJ

Physical Appearance:

Marlene may be the shortest member of her crew, but as its leader, she’s learned to command a room the moment she crosses the threshold. It’s an art she’s learned and mastered lifetime after lifetime. Striking with a face that seems to be made entirely of edges and angles, cheekbones sharp enough to slip a throat, teeth always slightly bared as if she’s tasted flesh before and isn’t afraid to rip into your skin.

Marlene looks every bit the kingpin, whether she’s dressed in one of her pantsuits, leather jacket and jeans, or even in a tee shirt and flip flops. It’s less about her attire and the way she carries herself. Again, she’s had more years than she can count to know how to assert herself in places where she may be looked over. Never mind the striking features the grab others’ attention - flame red hair, pale green eyes, and signature red lipstick you would catch her dead in before she ever went out without it, Marlene carries herself with the gait of someone poised to devour worlds. Who’s to say that isn’t the truth?

That’s what the gods are known for, after all... aren’t they? Otherworldly beauty and otherworldly brutality?

Background

No one quite knows how old Marlene is - though it’s speculated by members of her inner circle that even she has forgotten her precise age. Whether or not this is true, she has not given any indication. All anyone knows is that she has lived a long, long time. Longer than any of them, longer than entire civilizations.

As the leader, Marlene has always has to present herself as reasonably level-headed, controlled outside the occasional snaps of frightful anger, a little overbearing in her need to dictate every plan maybe, but what criminal kingpin isn’t? What’s odd is the new fear kept behind closed doors, Marlene second guessing her own ideas to a degree that is wholly out of character, running over plans again and again, pulling them apart and looking for flaws, debriefing even after successful missions when everyone else just wants to celebrate, unconsciously pressing her hand to her heart like reassurance that it’s still beating.

In spite of her age and experience, Marlene has only ever known servitude, and one can imagine the toll that takes on someone after such a long time. Though whispers breathe down the streets of a new plight sweeping through the city. New gods are rising. No one knows how or why, but they’re there, they are coming. A new host is rising to take over what the old gods are dying and leaving behind - or simply are too apathetic to care for anymore.

They are coming, the streets whisper.

They are coming.

Blurb:

Aeric clapped his hands together softly, his expression pondering as he asked, “What purpose does a pulse serve to the human body?”

The human body. Marlene grimaced. Another jab at her, to remind her that she was no longer, and likely would never be fully human ever again. He lived to belittle her. And Marlene absolutely hated being belittled.

“It’s how we feel the heartbeat,” said Marlene. She was thankful at least to still have a heartbeat to prove that she was alive. She was unsure Aeric could say the same.

“Exactly,” said Aeric, pointing quickly at where Marlene was seated. “It’s not the exact heartbeat, but it’s how we know that it’s there.”

Marlene couldn’t resist biting back, just a little bit. “I’m not sure how you expect my crew to run a heist in one of the most densely occupied areas of the city at any given time. Even when it’s closed, there are people always there, just waiting for it to open.”

“That’s why this isn’t a heist in the way you might believe it to be. Any items with monetary value that you accrue during this job, will just be a bonus for you to keep.”

Slowly, the realization of what he was asking her to do started to sink in. “Is this an assassination, then?”

“You’ve got two skilled killers in your circle,” said Aeric. “Use the others as backup and this should be on the list of easier jobs I’ve asked you to complete.”

Swallowing, Marlene flicked her bangs from her face and turned her gaze back to Aeric. Ever the intrigued client. “For someone who has all the time in the world, what is there for you to accomplish at a building full of a bunch of twenty-somethings looking to forget their shitty lives for a couple hours?”

“Bear in mind what I said about the Pulse being the indication of a life force,” said Aeric. Marlene did try to keep that in mind as he continued his explanation.

“Sounds to me like you want to take away the life of the city then, if we’re looking at this symbolically,” said Marlene. “Don’t you think that might be a bit counterproductive?”

“I’m sure you know more than most people by now that in order to preserve some form of life, another must be given up in its stead.”

Ice skittered down Marlene’s spine, straightening it as gooseflesh prickled along her skin. Yes. She did understand. She understood perfectly what he meant. At the insinuation of what had become of Elian was somehow his doing, she curled her fingers into her palms and squeezed so hard that her nails threatened the draw blood. He would suffer what he’d done. He would pay with as much time Marlene could glean from his insufferable, ancient existence.

“I am aware,” she said, her voice just as icy and calm.

Taglist:

@firefeatherx @goldenhour-goldenboy @mandoplease @mylifeliterally @phoenixhalliwell @havenforafrazzledmind @living-reminder @beatriz-silva-00 @pascalz @worldominatorx @givemethatgold @agirllovespancakes @lilacyennefer @dignityneeded @veuliee @briskywalker @davairys @aetherwrites @ryns-ramblings @teriwrites (let me know if you want to be +/-)

[itstimetotheorize]

Little nightmares: the first lady of the maw, the sin of gluttony, and the true value of the children, part 1: The past (update, due to the events of little nightmares 2 I no longer believe in the seven deadly sins theory)

with the release of little nightmares 2 in 2020, many of us can now assume that the little nightmares world is being set up for a series of games to tackle a much bigger plot. Which is why I feel that its time to figure out just where the story of this world is headed. I have many theories for this series, but let me start off by talking about the “lady” of the maw, Six, what their connection is,  and what its all leading up to. But most importantly, I want to try and make sense of just what the heck happened in the first little nightmares game! so strap yourselves in everyone, cause this is a long one! as such I will separate this post into 3 parts, links will be included to each part.

Now, In the first little nightmares we discover that the “lady” of the maw is revealed to have supernatural powers; she can levitate things, steal the life force from others and even turn children into nomes, telling us that things such as magic really do exist in this world

despite her deadly abilities the lady proves no match for sixes quick thinking  in their final battle. Near the end of the game, six at last defeats the lady, and finally gets the chance to escape the god forsaken nightmare that is The Maw... ...unfortunately! six gets hit with one last hunger pain and instead opts to satisfy that hunger by biting and eating a piece of the ladys neck!.  The lady quickly dies from her injury and in a bizarre turn of events, six seemingly inherits the ladys deadly powers. Don’t get me wrong, Six inheriting the ladys powers is a nice added twist, since six now has the ability to kill all those that tried to kill her. But as I watched six gracefully make her way towards the exit I began to wonder to myself.....how was it possible for six, a tiny little girl with very tiny teeth, to have the capability and strength to chomp on the ladys neck and leave a fatal enough wound for her to die from!?....unless it wasn't just six who had a part to play in ending the ladys life ...

Although it may seem like the first game revolved around six and the lady, we are all forgetting the fact that the story had another character hiding in the shadows, that character... is shadow Six.

shadow six has been seen by mainly us, the audience. Every time six has a hunger pain and begins eating to satisfy that hunger, shadow six appears and watches six eat her meal  from a distance. But what exactly is shadow six? and why is it that six never noticed it was there?

Well let me start off by saying that I, as well as others,  do not believe shadow six is really six, but rather some dark entity trying to take on the form of six. Some believe that shadow six is a representation of her slowly succumbing to evil. Others have even speculated that the little nightmares games have a connection to the seven deadly sins and that this dark figure along with the rest of the staff in the maw, each represent a different sin, maybe, but what if they didn't?

The only other times we see a suspicious dark entity appear in the game is when six is fighting against the lady. Every time six points the tiny mirror in her hand towards the lady, the lady yells out in pain then teleports away, leaving a trail of black smoke/specs in her path, this trail of dark specs is identical to the darkness that surrounds shadow six whenever she is on screen .

In secrets of the maw when the runaway boy gets captured by the lady, the lady levitates the boy into the air and a cloud of darkness begins to cover him, turning him into a nome.

When six inherits the powers of the lady, shadow six appears one last time, all be it very faintly (I cant see her in this picture, but its been verified that its there), and when it does, dark specks of shadow begin to surround six with a loud buzzing sound.

Where am I going with this?,  what if the shadow six we have been observing was never a manifestation of sixs evil side, but rather a manifestation of the “ladys” powers following six around !..  If this is true, then what the heck kind of power is the “lady” using and how is it that it can manifest itself to do what it wants, it should be after-all powers that only the lady can control...unless their not.  what if these powers were never hers to begin with? what if they were original someone elses?

Many people have theorized that the “lady”we see may in fact not have been the original “lady” of the maw. But if she really isn't then who is?. In little nightmares secrets of the maw, the antagonist known simply as “the granny” is believed to be the mother of the lady, and that this granny may in fact have been the previous lady of the maw... until she was overthrown and had her powers taken away from her...by her own daughter!, that daughter would of coarse be the current lady of the maw that faught six.

what makes everyone say this? well, in the game, as six makes her way up the stairs to the ladys room we get  to see a variety of pictures hanging on the wall. Out of all the pictures we see, 2 of them have been talked about the most. The first is the picture of the lady and what appears to be four other geishas standing next to her, but have either been scribbled out or painted over in black.

the second picture, depicts a little girl in a yellow dress standing next to the lady

At first, many of us are lead to believed that this little girl is six. But I, as well as others, believe that the girl standing next to the lady is actually the lady when she was a child, standing next to the granny when she used to be the lady of the maw, so, what happened? 

throughout the maw we can see various pictures, including more bizarre pictures of different geishas, (thank u animators for releasing these)

and even statues of different geishas

originally, fans believed that the granny was someone who valued her beauty but soon began to have fears of what would happen to her beauty as she grew older and older. It was then that the lady began to practice magic in a effort to find a way to make her beauty last forever. However, if their really were multiple geishas in the maw then out of all the geishas we have seen in pictures and statues thus far, its likely that the granny was never even the first lady of the maw...if so, then who was the one that practiced magic...who was the FIRST lady of the maw?

out of all the pictures we have seen, I’m guessing that the geisha with the red lips was the first lady of the maw, after all its her picture that’s hanging in the library in secrets of the maw. In librarys, its usually traditional for the pictures of the founders of the library to be hung up for everyone to see. So its possible that the first ladys picture was kept in the maws library as a reminder of who founded the library and the maw.

it was this lady that originally studied and practiced magic in an effort to find a way to remain eternally beautiful, . However, seeing as things such as eternal youth and eternal life are things not commonly obtained with good magic, perhaps as the original lady grew more and more desperate for a solution to accomplish her goal she began to dive deeper and deeper into darker, more forbidden forms of magic in her library.

eventually the original ladys search lead her to the one subject that would guarantee her results, demon summoning!.

Demons, in many folklore and religions, have always been depicted as evil entities who are more than happy to strike a deal and give a person whatever it is they want in exchange for their most cherished and valuable belonging, their soul.

The original lady could have discovered a way to summon a demon and when she did, she didn't just summon any demon. In her desperate attempts to satisfy her growing desire for eternal beauty, the original lady might have caught the attention of one very powerful demon...or rather...one of the 7 princes of hell, who are  better known today as.... the seven deadly sins!... but which one?

In the game, gluttony had long been speculated to play a role in the maw. Many speculated that each member of the maw represented a different sin... however, what if they all represented a single sin... gluttony. In the game, Six, the guests, the staff and even the lady revolve around satisfying some sort of  hunger or desire. So maybe years ago the originally lady struck a deal with the sin of gluttony to not only give her life long beauty but to preserve that beauty forever

however, these are demons we are talking about, if she did in fact make a deal with the sin of gluttony there must have been one or two major twists that came along with that deal, if so... what was the twist?. In secrets of the maw, when the runaway kid is sneaking around the ladys estate he comes across the current lady starring at herself through an unbroken mirror, its here that we finally see for the very first time the ladys face...except... we soon realize that despite her appearance as a beautifully masked geisha, the mirror reveals the ladys face to be a horrifically ugly creature ... and yet... something about this doesn't make sense...her mask.

the current ladys mask does not match her large facial structure seen in the mirror, and its not just her face. Her hands, which  appear small and slender... appear long and pointy in the mirror. If this is true of her face and hands, then its likely that the rest of her body doesn't match either!

but why? and how is this related to the granny when she used to be the lady?

 If the current lady has a horrific reflection, its possible that the granny and every other lady of the maw before her had a similar situation when they each  used to be in charge, but why?

Perhaps when the demon granted the first lady eternal beauty and eternal life, the demon decided to put a twist to her wish by making it so that her beauty could only be seen by others and not by herself!...the first lady lost the joy of gazing at the beauty she prided herself in having, and instead was forced to look at a reflection that highlighted her true self....her true self being of course... a hideous monster. And it didn't just stop there..

 in order to accomplish the first ladys deal the sin of gluttony must have decided to posses her! and rather than just stand idly by and let her continue on with her life, the demon forced the original lady to work for it in order to maintain the deal.... by feeding it!

(picture by Michael Breznau)

since a demon needs souls to be satisfied and not food like other living things the lady resorted to inviting others to her home... then later feed them to the demon inside her! Now clearly, after being pampered and feed, any guests/ customer would try to leave a business, however, the sin of gluttony didn’t want this happening... they had to stay. In order to keep the guests in the ladys establishment the sin of gluttony could have spread its influence to the guests, giving them a never ending appetite that could only be satisfied by staying in the first ladys establishment.

And when they did, the lady used the powers that the sin of gluttony granted her to suck out the life and souls from her guests...feeding them directly  to the demon inside her.

Unfortunately, as the demons appetite grew more and more uncontrollable the first lady found herself taking more and more drastic measures to satisfy its hunger.  

With all the spare bodies lying around, the first  lady must have decided to use those bodies as food to expand her business, throwing away any form of clothing and luggage they might have carried elsewhere in the maw. The shoes and luggages of course, piled up over the years until it created a sea of shoes. This was the point of no return... the original lady was now feeding her guests to other guests!

If the guests were really eating other people this would explain why six never ate any of the food lying around the maw, she knew it was made of people!.

Having a life where you would have to work endlessly for a demon sounds horrible once you think about it, so then why, why did the original lady continue to do this even if it meant she could never look into the mirror and gaze at her own beauty? ....most likely because the fear of death outweighed every sense of desire to break the deal and face the consequences.

And while we are on the subject of her reflection, I couldn't help but think back to one small detail in the game. in the game six makes her way into a bathroom that reveals a suspiciously long mirror hanging on the wall.

when six broke the mirror, we discovered that it was in fact a fake two way mirror leading to a small room with a single chair in it.

In the firstl ladys desperate attempts to cope with having a horrific reflection she must have had a two way mirror installed in the bathroom so that whenever a beautiful woman guest gazed at herself in the mirror the original lady would be standing on the opposite side... staring at her... pretending to be looking at her own reflection as a way to cope with her hideous reflection.  

when six enters the ladys residence its noted that throughout the rooms. broken mirrors can be found practically everywhere.

but as we have seen, not all the mirrors are broken. In the secrets of the maw, the runaway kid comes across the lady staring at herself in one unbroken mirror...which may possibly be the only intact mirror in the entire estate of the lady.

but why does she have this one mirror unbroken?... maybe after the  first lady discovered she could never see her own beauty through a mirror...she broke every mirror she could find out of frustration...except  for 2. Perhaps she kept one large mirror so that she could come back to it every now and again in hopes that one day she would wake up, look into that mirror and see that she is just as beautiful as she remembered. Years later, when  the new lady of the maw took her place, the new lady  would unknowingly find herself doing the same thing as her mother, and every time they did look into that giant mirror...they would cry...as they realized that they would forever be horrifyingly ugly. This cycle continued over the years as each new daughter took the tittle of “the lady of the maw” for themselves (I’ll get to the second mirror in a bit)

but why would each lady even take on a daughter that would one day overthrow her from her title of “lady”. Why would the daughters even agree to living their life forever beautiful in the eyes of others but never to themselves and forever a slave to a demon inside them....unless....they didn't know?

-end of part 1, continue in part 2 

part 2 link: https://itstimetotheorize.tumblr.com/post/627840226274033665/little-nightmares-the-original-lady-of-the-maw?is_related_post=1

[aspenflower17]

Wrath is The Cat

Hey everyone! This is my first completed fan fiction. It is very long, but I want to make sure I don’t leave you guys hanging with an unfinished fic. It is for Obey Me! and I had fun writing it. Know that I have finished Lesson Twenty regular and Lesson 15 Hard, so there might be spoilers. It also talk about Fruits Basket in this fic, though I don’t think there’s any major spoilers for that (also, if you haven’t read it or watched the new anime, you should!).

I am posting this at midnight, so I apologize if there’s formatting problems or such. Please comment or DM me with anything major you see and I will attempt to fix :)

Satan / Reader

Word Count:  3960

[some angst at the end]

“Are you reading that again?” Satan asked, eyeing the newest volume of My Hero Academia Mc had.

“Technically,  this is the first time I’ve read this volume, but yes, I am reading My Hero Academia.“

"Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why would you read that when you could read real literature?”

“Hold on just a minute,” Mc said, fully shutting the volume so she could face him, “What did you say?”

“Come on. You can’t tell me you find that more compelling and as well written as A Portrait of Dorian Grey.”

“I never said one was superior to the other. Just because on is good does not invalidate the other. By that mode of thinking, no one should make new literature because it would never be as good as the classics, which is, simply put, a stupid idea.”

“Well, what about the issue of the art itself. These over idealized figures that couldn’t actually look the way they do in real life. ”

“Says one of the prettiest men I’ve ever met,” Mc muttered under her breath.

“Hmmm… what was that?”

“Are you talking about uber-boobs and uber-muscles?” Mc asked, hoping he honestly hadn’t heard her.

“Among other things, yes,” Satan said, though she could feel him trying to figure out what she’d actually said.

“Not all manga and comics are like that! It’s a trope in both genres. Before I started reading them, it’s something I thought too,” Mc said, not realizing that her voice had gotten very loud and fervent. Satan sat there, looking as if he was deciding whether to continue the conversation. Mc took a deep breath, her inner fan girl needing to quiet down in order to get through to him, “Have you read any?”

“Yes… Well, I tried once. Levi begged me to read one, so I conceded. Long story short, it was not to my liking.”

“Which one?”

“I believe it was called, That Time I Accidentally Fist Fought A Monster.”

Mc pinched the bridge of her nose, a habit she’d subconsciously picked up from Satan. He smiled softly as he recognized the imitation. That was a terrible anime or manga to start someone off on. It had a pretty good story, but it had far too many silly anime tropes for someone like Satan.

“That… That is not the one I would’ve started you out on.”

“And just which one would you have started me out on?”

Mc stopped, and started to think. Most of the anime and manga she liked were romance, and she wasn’t sure if those would be a good fit for him, especially since most of them didn’t have much of a story line besides the relationship. Although, there was one she had been able to get her brother into…

“My first instinct would be Fruits Basket. I’m not sure how much you'd like it at first, but I think if you give it a real chance and read until… the third volume, probably… I think you’d really end up enjoying it.”

“What do you think I’d like about it?”

“Hmmm… You’d probably really appreciate the dynamics between Kyo and Yuki. I also think you’ll appreciate the character depth and development. There’s also a lot of plot intricacies and plot twists. I also agree with a lot of people online that it’s a good introduction to anime and manga.”

“I’ll try it then.”

“Wait… What?”

“I have a feeling you’ve had more success introducing people to new things, especially since you have specific elements you think I would enjoy. So, I will try out your suggestion.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with my impulse reaction? I probably know of one’s you’ll enjoy more,” Mc asked, suddenly feeling a little vulnerable. Fruits Basket was one of the first anime she’s found on her own, and it still stood as one of her favorites. If Satan, who’s opinion she really valued, ended up hating it…

“I find I can trust your intuition most of the time. We also have similar tastes in regards to literature.”

“Oh… Well, I do have a copy of the first volume in my room if you want.”

“You have a copy here in the Devildom?”

“Mmmhmm. I ordered the whole set off of Akuzon after I found out Levi hadn’t read it.”

“I see. In that case, sure.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Mc smiled to herself the whole way back to her room. Though she was still a bit nervous, but after hearing Satan praise her tastes in literature, she was feeling more confident, “If I can at least get him to acknowledge it’s worth, I’ll feel accomplished.”

After grabbing the first volume, she thought for a second and grabbed the second. She put them in her book bag, and started on the familiar route to his room. All the brothers had a defined smell to their room, though Satan’s had always been the easiest for her to find. The smell of books started the moment you turned down the hallway his room was on. Standing in front of his dark wood door, she took a deep breath, knocked, then entered.

Satan was not where she had left him, which was kind of odd to her. Carefully avoiding a stack of books she had knocked over on a previous occasion, she started looking around, “Satan?”

There was some shuffling, and then his voice came from above, “You’re back quicker than I thought you would be. Come on up.”

Wait… What? Up the spiral staircase? For real? Everyone knew how rare it was to be allowed up to the second story of Satan’s room. No one went up without express permission. Even Mammon stayed out after being hexed so many times he’d lost feeling on the side of his big toe. Mc had only been up there once, and that was because Satan had wanted to show off his newest rare book. She had only been allowed to sit in the single armchair he had up theorem and she couldn’t touch anything, and for good reason. Satan kept his oldest, rarest, and most important books up there. He had even put a spell on every book up there to preserve them, and, if rumor was correct, a barrier that stopped him from going up there was he was upset. Aside from the few grimories and numerous magic books he had up there were rare human finds as well, all originals or first editions. One of Shakespeare’s folios. DaVinci’s Codex of Leicester. The Babylonian Talmud as well as an exemplified copy of the Magna Carter, both copies that the rest of the world didn’t know existed. A Gutenberg Bible, though his brother’s had no idea he had it. A collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Even an original copy of the Kama Sutra, which Asmo had given to him as a birthday present.

Getting to the top of the stairs, Mc stopped, not wanting to get too close to any of the books. Looking around, she couldn’t repress the sigh that emerged unbidden to her lips. Soft lighting that was perfect for reading with the spines of all the ancient books facing the world. Scrolls rested in their holders on the far wall. And there was the fourth eldest, crouched near one of the shelves, hand to his mouth and a furrow in his brow, thinking hard about something. His blonde hair had an almost golden hue in the light and his green eyes sparkled.

At the sigh, he looked up and smiled, “Go ahead and have a seat.”

Mc nodded and started over towards the chair she’d sat in the one other time she’d been allowed up here, but stopped halfway. The chair she sat on last time was still there, but now there was another chair. They looked fairly similar, being big reading chairs, but the new addition was much less worn and was more feminine in design. Having found the book he was looking for, Satan walked past Mc, and sat in the larger of the two chairs, effectively showing Mc which chair to take. After sitting down, she had to take a moment. It was by far, the most comfortable chair she’s ever sat in.

“I take it you like the chair then. Good, I’m glad,” he smiled, “I made sure it was large enough that you can curl your feet up on the seat like you do when you’re reading.”

“Wait… This is for me?”

“Of course. You need your own place to sit and read when you’re up here.”

Mc was at a loss for words, the gesture speaking volumes, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just promise you’ll keep coming over for our reading nights; that’s all I ask.”

“That’s the easiest promise in the world to keep! Of course I will!”

Satan smiled again, one of the real smiles she’d been gifted with more and more frequently, “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Now, where’s this book you were talking about?”

“Yes, hold on,” Mc turned and grabbed it from her bag, “So, these are collector’s editions, so I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to be careful, but…”

“No problem,” Satan replied, taking the book, “If you’d indulge me, I also have a story I want you to read,” and he grabbed the book he had gotten from the shelf, “Do you remember the mystery author I told you about?”

“Yeah. Isn’t his name A. Cohen?”

“That’s the one. Well, I was wondering if you’d read his books while I read yours? I know mystery isn’t necessarily your favorite genre, but -” Satan cut off, looking down at Mc’s hand on his arm.

“I’d be more than happy to,” Mc beamed.

Satan smiled, “Glad to hear it. Now, these books are hard to come by in the Devildom. Please be careful with them. I happened to find a box set of his complete works, so replacing it would be pretty hard. The first one is Blind Intrigue.”

“Got it. Not that I wouldn’t be uber careful with anything you have up here.”

Satan laughed, “Well, I appreciate that,” and he opened the manga volume.

“Oh, did anyone tell you the way to read manga?”

“You read it right to left, correct?”

“Yes, including the speech bubbles. So, you’d read a page like this,” and Mc proceeded to show the way a page should be read.

“Ah. That would have been helpful last time. Thank you.”

“No problem,” and with that, they both started reading. Mc found Blind Intrigue very intriguing, enjoying that it wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill murder mystery. As she got further into the book, she subconsciously slipped off her shoes, and curled her feet up next to her. She almost forgot about the demon next to her. A sudden shift next to her brought her back to reality.

“I finished it.”

“Ah… W… What do you think?”

“It is much better than Levi’s suggestion. I am interested in continuing the series.”

“… If you want, I did bring the second volume with me…”

“You did?”

“Mmmhmm. I was hoping you’d like it enough to want the second volume…”

“Well, you did ask that I read until the third volume, so sure.”

“Mc beamed as she grabbed for the second volume, after safely tucking the mystery novel between the chair and her legs.

“So, are you enjoying Blind Intrigue?”

“Yes! It is really good. I like that it’s an actual mystery novel, a lot like the Sherlock Holmes stories. Most mystery novels revolve around a murder, but since this one dpesn’t, I like it more.”

“Very good,” Satan said while handing her the first volume back, “So, who’s your favorite character?”

“Huh? In Blind Intrigue or Fruits Basket?”

“Fruits Basket.”

“Ah, Momiji.”

“He reminds me too much of Mammon.”

“I… Guess? Just… give him some time. He’s really great.”

“So… who’s your second favorite?”

“Well, Momiji is my favorite favorite. Kyo is my main character favorite.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I have a feeling you’ll really end up liking him.”

“Ah, well, good to know,” Satan said, as Mc handed him the second volume.

There was silence for awhile until Satan burst out laughing. Mc looked up expecting him to share, but he kept reading; a sign he really liked the story. Pretending to go back to reading, Mc snuck a glance at Satan. He had a content smile on his face, and was even further along in the book than she had thought he would be. She smiled, feeling satisfied and a little vindicated in her choice.

Mc was about halfway through Blind Intrigue when she heard Satan shift on his chair. She looked over to find him sitting with the second volume closed and eyes on her. She in turn closed his book, waiting for him to speak.

“If the rest of the series is this high of quality, I definitely want to finish it.”

Satan helped Mc transport the rest of the volumes to his room that day. Though he really loved the series, he would only read it when Mc was around. As she now had a chair upstairs, Satan suggested they read up there, and he began sharing all the amazing books he had up there with her. It was nice for Mc, especially since none of the other brothers knew she was allowed up there. Satan finished Fruits Basket fairly quickly, not quite gushing about how much he loved the characters and story, asking Mc if she had any other manga recommendations. She was more than happy to oblige. Soon, Satan was reading manga whenever Mc was in his room, but only when she was in his room.

He didn’t like manga that were all trope and no substance, but he would try anything Mc brought him since she usually brought “good manga”. One of his favorites was Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventures. It came as a surprise to him when, one day he declared a series to be his second favorite, after Fruits Basket, and Mc told him it was a series that Levi had gotten her into.

“You know, I’m sure he’d love discussing it with you…”

“Wait. You think I should go waltzing into his room and say, ‘Hey Levi, I really enjoy The Watchman’s Spell and am all caught up on it. We should talk about it’?”

“Well, yeah, basically. I’ll be there to referee, so I can help if needed. I almost never see you two hanging out together, and I actually think you two have more in common than you realize.”

“He just gets so long winded about… whatever. He also acts childish at times.”

“I do those too.”

“You will apologize though. He will not,” Satan paused a second, and then continued quieter, “Plus, it’s different when you do it.”

“Have you ever considered that he doesn’t back down or stop because he feels like no one cares what he thinks or what his interests are?”

Satan stopped, his retort lost. Was that really why? He considered again, and then turned to Mc, “Okay, I’ll do it, but he’s not invited to our reading nights.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Levi didn’t take the news the way Mc would’ve liked.

“Wha… Mc, w-w-what are you t-talking about?”

“I’ve been showing Satan some manga and he’s liked some of them. I think you should show him some too since you know waaaaaaay more than I do. He really loved Watchman’s Spell.”

Levi seemed scared but also irritated, “You had him read Watchman’s Spell?! Why?!”

“I… I thought he’d appreciate it and when he did, I thought you’d be excited to have someone new to talk to about it…”

“I have the entire internet to talk to about it, plus you. Why would I want-” Levi broke off, scowling as he turned away, but then rounded back on Mc, “Are you doing this to make fun of me? Are you tired of me, and so you’re trying to pawn me off on someone else? What, are you using your pact to make Satan act like he’s interested in talking to me?”

“No, Levi, listen to-”

“Glad to hear it, because you’re not getting rid of me, ya normie! You’re the one that wanted to make a pact, so you’re stuck with me! We’re also best friends so you better-”

“Levi!” Mc grabbed his face with both hands, worried as she saw his tail appear. She had expected some jealousy, but nothing this bad.

Levi stopped. Having Mc this close to his face made his mind go completely blank.

“Just because I expanded Satan’s literary horizons does not change the fact we’ve already discussed our wifeoo’s. It doesn’t erase all the time we’ve spent watching and discussing TSL. All the raids we’ve gone on, owning all the noobs… Though I’m kind of a noob… The point is, Lord of Shadows, your Henry is trying to get the Lord of Masks and you to become friends, just like with the Lord of Fools.”

Levi screwed up his face, bringing up his hand to hide behind. Mc let go, feeling the tension leave the room.

After turning and composing himself a bit (Did Mc just hold my face?!?!?!?), Levi turned, lifting his eyes to Satan, who was simply watching him, “Who’s your favorite character?”

“Zeke.”

“He’s actually my second favorite.”

“Who is your favorite then?”

“Brielle.”

“Ah, that makes sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that she seems like the type of character you’d enjoy. She’s not bad. In fact, I enjoy the dynamic she brings to the tower.”

“Well, she became my favorite when she stopped the entire colony from starting an uprising against Charles when they thought he was keeping them from going home.”

“That was chapter 5 right?”

“Y-yes, actually!” Levi smiled, his eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree, as he started discussing the plot and fan theories with his brother. Satan responded to all his prompts or listened quietly, occasionally adding his own thoughts. He was being more patient than Mc had ever seen him be with Levi, and even seemed to be enjoying himself.

Good, Mc thought, watching the two bond, They both needed someone to get them out of their own head. At least I know I can leave these two without too many regrets.

Mc hadn’t brought up the fact her year was almost up to any of the brothers. She didn’t know if any of them had realized how close it was. She was not looking forward to leaving, but she knew she couldn’t let them just revert back to the way they had been, especially Satan. They had all come too far.

“Mc has an interesting thought on this subject actually. Mc, what are you doing over there? Come over here!”

“Coming!”

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Satan traced his fingers along Mc’s chair. Of course he’d gotten the chair for her so she could be more comfortable, but also to have a piece of her after she’d left. He hadn’t realized how much it would come to mean to him.

He pulled out his DDD, starting to flip through all the photos he’d snuck of her. Her, next to him. Her being so careful with his books. Her, sleeping in his bed, hair splayed across the pillow. He couldn’t count the number of times her scent had kept him from going after one of his brothers since she’d left.

He knew he was being reclusive, and she wouldn’t have liked that. But, weren’t they all being reclusive?

He sat down, head sinking into his hands, DDD put on the arm of the chair. Why did she have to leave? She had been such a breath of fresh air, so willing to discuss anything and everything with him. He had been able to open up to her, and she’d accepted him just as he was. No strings attached. For the first time in his life, he’d felt unique. Wanted. Needed. No longer alone.

He knew she’d been that way with all of them, but�� It felt like she’d specifically picked him. He hadn’t been particularly interested in the human living with them, other than to see what she was doing to his brothers. She had been the one to approach him about books. She had been the one to pick his brain. She had read almost every book he’d suggested. He was special… Right?

He hadn’t noticed the tears until he opened his eyes and only saw a blurry floor, “If I’m special, why didn’t she…”

Mc had given each brother a gift when she left. When it was his turn, she’d whispered something in his ear, but she’d been crying so her words had caught. He couldn’t make out the words then, and even though he’d run them through his head more times than he could count, he couldn’t figure out what she’d said. She’d been so beautiful standing there, fresh tears ready to fall. And then… she was gone.

He had isolated himself for a week afterwards. He hadn’t been in the House of Lamentation though. Too many memories. In some small shack in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere he could release all his feelings and hurt no one.

As he was about to get up, a white blur caught his eye. Blinking, he bent over and picked it up. It was a letter. He turned it over, his heart jumping when he recognized Mc’s handwriting. He traced the letters of his name, hands shaking. He then carefully opened the letter and started reading,

My Dear Satan,

Seems you were able to hear what I said when I left. Good. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get it out.

Anyways, I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t give you your gift in front of everyone else. Not only is it too heavy, but you’re too special to me for them to be part of the gift.

I wish I could tell you everything in my heart right now, but I don’t want to cheapen anything. I will return to you so please be patient and wait until then.

If you would, please go check on Levi for me. I can tell you right now, he’s not okay right now. He gets so lost in his own head and I worry about him. I leave him in your stead until I get back.

Satan, always remember: You are important. You deserve every ounce of love you can get. You also have the right to feel whatever you are feeling. You are not your brother, and I never want you comparing yourself to him, because you are an individual. I may not always be there with you, but never forget: you may not have had control over your birth, but that is not what defines you. You are so much more than a word.

Love,

Mc

P.S. I just realized you never told me. Who is your favorite Fruits Basket character?

Satan had never moved so fast down his staircase. Why had he chosen a spiral staircase? He was so eager, he almost knocked over the book pile he was looking for. When he saw what was behind it, he sank to his knees and gathered every Fruits Basket volume in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Levi was moping around his room when there was a knock on the door. For a second he thought it was Mc, but then realized she was gone, making himself sad all over again. He shuffled over to the door, and opened it.

There stood Satan with… manga… and, puffy eyes?

“Hey, can we hang out?” Satan asked.

“Sure. I’d like that.”

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Update: I now have a part two to this story and here’s the link